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):

Baby Bible Bashers

**UPDATE: There is more attention on this now, and you can watch the full program clips here (as of now)**

As if you need more incentive to gag than seeing young kids scared out of their minds by religious bullshit: demons, hellfire, God's anger...then take a gander at Samuel Boutwell and other "pint-sized preachers" featured in Channel 4's "Baby Bible Bashers" series. They are placed outside of abortion clinics, made to scream at the "homersexshuls" that are ruining our country and using gay penguins to transform us into Sodom...

You can watch a lot of this on YouTube, or see a clip of him here.

We've seen this little brainwashed joker Boutwell before, and in his interview with Juju Chang on ABCNews, which you can see the extended version of on YouTube (see another clip here), when asked why he was preaching, he admitted that his dad wanted him to. When she asked him further questions, he was stumped. It became painfully obvious he was regurgitating the shit he'd been programmed to.

Time to diagnose this as an act of God

I know it's wrong of me to feel this way, but when I see 60 tornadoes hit the SE and leave 50 people dead, I have to wonder why people can't make the logical connection to God's wrath in the same way that they do when a "liberal" or non-Christian area gets hit with a natural disaster. Oh yeah, it's because they're fu#$*ng stupid.

Maybe God's angry that TN went for Hillary and the SE went for Huckabee?

Santa & God

It's inevitable: comparisons between Santa & God.

I've heard theists make a psychological profile of atheists before: they have bad father figures, they never got over the disillusionment of finding out Santa isn't real...this cartoon plays on that a bit:

If you can't make out the caption very easily, it reads:

Dear Children
One Day You Will Learn Everything About Santa Claus.
On That Day Remember Everything The Adults Have Told You About Jesus.

Much to the theists' chagrin, there are an awful lot of parallels between God and Santa, when one thinks of it. Seasame Street Atheism or no, the very same "childlike faith" we are required to have to sustain belief in God is similar with respect to belief in Santa. The unquestioning submission to authority and tradition are similar between children and adults compared to people and the Church/church doctrine...in ways, dissimilar in others.

God does these magical acts on very rare occassions, of which we have no hard evidence at all, that are supposed to justify our belief in him throughout the thousands of years after these events occurred. Santa just gets his magic thing on once a year, spending only 34 microseconds at each stop. Hopefully, Santa will get a little more green and reduce his reindeer's methane emissions using kangaroo enzymes; then he ought to ask people to shop online this Xmas to help lower CO₂ emissions.

Something re atheism

I started reading Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Hecht this weekend (a damned behemoth, with 500 pages spanning 12 chapters -- not counting the 25 pages of notes, 7 pages of bibliography and 20 pages of index). The book has been reviewed and covered well: NPR, APM, PoI. It's interesting so far, and some of the front matter actually hit directly on the topic of my debate with Andrew on facebook: what she calls "the great schism" between "our human world...a world of reason and plans, love and purpose," and "the world beyond our human life--an equally real world in which there is no sign of caring or value, planning or judgment, love or joy." A similar take was given here, but this author talks about a sort of schism between "heart and head". Some beliefs are definitely more reasonable than others, but we still long to believe unreasonable things. Why?

As I began reading, I was transported back a few months in my own mind.

I think that for a long while there, especially when I was writing regularly at Debunking Christianity and arguing incessantly with people like Triablogue and (please forive me) CalvinDude, I was really struggling with my own set of beliefs. I knew I had lost faith in the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God, but I wasn't sure what that meant, or how I was going to set about replacing my old beliefs with new ones, or what those new ones were.

What about meaning and value? What about morality and virtue? I would sometimes stare out of my window and feel the urge to finish my graduate degree completely gone. I began to think about things from a cosmic perspective -- how damned insignificant our dreams and hopes are, in the scheme of things. I flirted with existentialism and tried to find meaning in a godless universe:

My own burden at the moment is in maintaining rationalism -- a commitment to reason, and optimism -- a commitment not to only see things as better, but to be better and in so doing, this purpose makes "all well".

I soon realized I was depressed and got on medication.

I don't know if ex-believers ever really come to peace with the "great schism" any more than devout believers do. The ones I envy are those people in the middle; the people whose apathy and lack of curiosity and intellectual drive confers upon them a sort of "ignorant bliss" from which they can merrily go about life either believing or disbelieving but not spending a great deal of emotional/mental capital on either one.

I don't know exactly how I'd describe my current state of ataraxia, a sort of tenuous equilibrium in which I've found I have completely lost the obsession I used to have with arguing with theists online. I also started to evolve in my thinking as I wanted to change UF's atheist group (AAFSA) into a freethought group. I would say that I now regard "organized atheism" in a completely different light than I used to. I see things like the "coming out" campaign and I wonder if, in the end, this is just a passing fad as it was in the early 20C. I worry about global politics and environmentalism now much more than I worry about "discrimination" that non-believers face. Although I still see the dangers that religion can have, I see the twin danger that some organizations of atheists pose to themselves in not acting effectively towards common goods.

While I think that a lot of good work remains to be done by groups committed to freethought, I think it is primarily political and concerned with issues like church-state separation. Eddie Tabash had a nice speech on this topic given at the AAI conference a few months back (he also visited UF and spoke to my old freethought group on this subject). Some groups aren't focused on real-world issues and instead are "activists against religion," so to speak.

IMHO, atheist "activists" like these are contributing to the problem with atheism; people like the RRS give the rhetoric "secular fundamentalism" validity. Their desperation to exist as some sort of full-time anti-theist organization is almost a ministry, and one which they've found themselves increasingly desperate to keep funded. But beyond sad, it goes to a littl scary: on Kelly's MySpace profile, she says her general interest is "ending religion" (a little piece of me dies when I see this and this) -- something that bothers me to even consider. It not only reads like a statement straight out of the early 20C fascist book, it completely overlooks the benign aspects of things like Zen Buddhism and lumps all religion together as "bad". In April I wrote against such nonsense:

I also agree with Elaine Pagels and Michael Novak -- we cannot paint religion with such a broad brush as to attack all forms of religiosity and call names and hold to the old, insulting phraseologies ("reality-based community" and "I live by reason" are tacit insults). We must remind ourselves that there are voices of reason in the religious community, no matter how silly we feel some of their views are. And the Pagels of the world are those we atheists and we scientists need to sit down and have more discussion with. If that happened, there would be a great deal more respect on each side of the fence.

While Pagels (and intellectuals like her) are focused on getting the fundies to grow their brains a little to encompass the more sophisticated aspects of theology, and PZ et al on getting the fundies to stop their anti-scientific crusades, perhaps they could realize that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. Perhaps more honest discussion between the "evangelical", "uppity", "angry", "passionate" and "militant" atheists and liberal/moderate Christians would yield a rich reward in finding the assistance we can afford each other in reaching mutual goals.

Never mind that things like this just add fuel to the fire of the Pope's new screed on how "atheism causes social evil" and other such nonsense (of course, he's sweating a bit as the Vatican's coffers continue to shrink as Europe de-Christianizes). I don't think the dumb words of atheists nullify the fact of God's non-existence any more than the deviant sexual practices of Christians nullify historical questions about Jesus. I also don't think that trying to argue that Christians are dumb or that atheists are immoral are a good way to approach to these issues.

Although the importance of religion in our society must not be underestimated, neither must secular America, especially the trend as it applies towards younger Americans, something I've emphasized before:

The proportion of atheists and agnostics increases from 6% of Elders (ages 61+) and 9% of Boomers (ages 42-60), to 14% of Busters (23-41) and 19% of adult Mosaics (18-22).

Looking at very recent polls, around 18% of Americans do not believe in God. This trend is in line with other recent assessments of the state of atheism, and the disparity in numbers between "atheist" and "82% of people believe in God" confirms that people are still reluctant to self-identify with "the A word" despite their admission that they don't believe in God. In the largest religious self-identification survey ever undertaken, 14% of those surveyed reported "no religion" but only 0.4% explicitly as "atheist". A more recent Baylor study found only 50% of "religious nones" identify as "atheists" -- again note the disparity between non-religious persons and people willing to identify as "atheist" and/or be active in some sort of atheist organization. Another recent poll in The Nation shows that the number of nonbelievers is much higher than commonly recognized - at around 27% not believing in a God (those willing to self-identify as atheists is still much lower).

Regardless of the exact number, the number of atheists visible in politics is next to zero, and that is unlikely to change. Atheists are still distrusted and that prejudice won't change overnight. And that's a lot of why people are reluctant to use the label, even when they admit that they aren't theists; I really think part of it boils down to groups like the RRS. Part of it can be attributed to the corrupt and increasingly-irrelevant Religious Right and their hatred and intolerance. When atheists start to look like those people (intolerant of religion in general), we're the mirror image of Falwell and D. James Kennedy, which turns people off in droves.

And that's scary.

The logical incoherence of prayer

I'm sure everyone has heard of or seen idiot Gov. Sonny Purdue howling to Jesus for water. I'm not mad about that; he's just another stupid politician who scheduled his "rain prayer" (on government property during his own taxpayer-funded workday) on a day that it was already supposed to rain according to the weather service (though it didn't). What makes me mad is this:

Twenty-two protesters were forced to stay more than a block away, out of earshot and out of sight of the prayer service, on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. They were members of the Atlanta Freethought Society. Signs include "Hail Priest-King Perdue" or "Pray on the Church Steps, not the Capitol Steps."

Now that, friends, pisses me off. Preventing a group of freethinkers' First Amendment-given right to freedom of speech, assembly and petition is just over the frigging top. That sort of thing should bring a lawsuit against every government office from dogcatcher to the "guvnah" himself.

Rational people already understand the logical conundrums that render prayer completely incoherent:

Imagine for a moment that Sonny's wisely-planned timing had paid off and it had begun to rain at the end of the day, as was predicted a week ahead of time (when he planned the event) by the weather services. Of course, everyone there would have claimed that their prayers had moved God to act on their behalf. Ditto if it rains the next day or the next...and basically up to and including the day it finally does rain -- prayer will be credited with the rain.

What about the fact that there is already a terrible drought that has cost the state a great deal of money? And that it is only going to get worse from here? How many farmers or residents with gardens have lost a great deal of money (the former maybe even being bankrupted, the latter having to buy food they planned to grow)? Whether God did it that very day, the next day, next week, month, year...the negative consequences of failing to act ahead of time still deserve to be accounted for. And how will theists do it?

They will blame US, of course! They'll say that God is angry about abortion or gay marriage or whatever. The funniest thing is the idea that God will stop being mad if people pray about it, or after some arbitrary amount of time punishing us all.

Basically God has the perfect system: getting all the credit for "answers" and none of the blame for "failures"! Think of it this way: heads, God wins; and tails, you lose!

If God exists, and wants to do something, then God will do it, right? Why does God need your help (prayer) to do it? Is God lacking confidence? Does God need encouragement? Or is God forgetful, and you're like the helpful pager that goes off before a meeting? He's got Alzheimer's?

Perhaps all prayer is horizontal -- for our own benefit?

Perhaps people think God doesn't really give a shit about things, and they have to raise God's conscientiousness about it...? That little girl dying of leukemia will just have to suffer and die, because God doesn't f-ing care...until you pray, that is. If God doesn't care enough to actually act until asked to do so, what kind of "goodness" does God possess, anyway?

God's like a grumpy old uncle whose ties to the family are so weak that he has to be prodded to attend holiday dinners, but, importantly, still cares just enough such that he can still be prodded to do so. He won't come on his own, though...

Perhaps they think that God is democratic in nature, and that a tally of votes is necessary for God to act -- God only cares about majority popularity: argumentum ad populum, anyone?

The only answer to these questions that renders coherence to reality at all is the simplest answer, and the most likely to be true: there is no God or gods, and if there are, then they don't give a shit and your prayers are you, as a grown-up adult, talking to your invisible magic friend, just like you did when you were a little child. Every empirical study has shown the same thing -- that prayers do nothing. Don't believe me? Find one documented amputee whose limb grew back from prayer. One. Ever. Here are documented cases of the flaws in these studies I've cited, and here are some of my thoughts on those studies.

Interesting analysis

**updated 12/4/07 to include link to article**

There is an interesting analysis of atonement, morality and justice in the new AA journal. From "For God so loved the world He did what?" by Gary J. Whittenberger, Ph.D., printed in the American Atheist Magazine, October 2007 (excerpt from p.23):

From the preceding discussion we can see that the standard Christian theology in regard to the crucifixion, death, resurrection and atonement of Jesus has several core beliefs:

1. One person X should sometimes request or command another person Y to prove his love for X by killing somebody else Z whom Y loves.
2. If asked or commanded by person X, another person Y should prove his love for X by killing somebody else Z whom Y loves.
3. One person X should sometimes spontaneously kill somebody else Z he loves in order to prove his love for another person Y.
4. If a person X or group of persons has rationally developed a justice system which works perfectly well, then he or the group should change it.
5. If a person X or group of persons has rationally developed a justice system which works perfectly well, then he or the group should subvert it by exempting some people from just punishment after they have behaved wrongly.
6. If a person X or group of persons has rationally developed a justice system which works perfectly well, then he or the group should subvert it by sometimes transferring penalties earned by one person Y to another person Z who has not earned them.
7. If a person X or group of persons has rationally developed a justice system which works perfectly well, then he or the group should subvert it by exempting some people from just punishment after they have behaved wrongly if they agree to accept irrational beliefs.
8. There exists a god X who would do or has already done those things.

All these core beliefs are irrational, unethical and/or false.

I had a long discussion on the question of how God can be both just and merciful at the same time with Todd Friel where I really emphasized #6 & 7 above. Of course he didn't get it/didn't agree. Oh well...

This week in God

Steve Benen's weekly segment is up, and you should read the whole thing. I just wanted to point out two things:

1) I read this the other day and I'm still scratching my head. I mean, I dislike Benny "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" Hinn as much as anyone, and I think the whole lot of those six are probably as corrupt and unethical as it gets. However, I just don't understand the legal power that a Congressperson has to audit the finances of these people.

The IRS? Sure! But Congress...!?!? We'll wait and see if this goes anywhere.

Oh yeah, and worth mention is that this Sen. Grassley of Iowa is a Republican. I found that surprising, given the close ties the GOP has with the RR, especially in a state like Iowa. Bravo to him for rising above the fray of partisan pandering.

2) "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" -- a documentary about Dover comes on PBS Tuesday, November 13, 8:00 pm, details here and here.

Update on the Antony Flew situation

Richard Carrier comments on the two articles in the NYT I mentioned about Antony Flew's book & conversion:

In my opinion the book's arguments are so fallacious and cheaply composed I doubt Flew would have signed off on it in sound mind, and Oppenheimer comes to much the same conclusion. It seems Flew simply trusted Varghese and didn't even read the book being published in his name. And even if he had, he is clearly incapable now of even remembering what it said. The book's actual author turns out to be an evangelical preacher named Bob Hostetler (who has also written several books with Josh McDowell), with considerable assistance from this book's co-author, evangelical promoter and businessman Roy Abraham Varghese.

It's a sad story all around.

A new way of stating the PoE

I was browsing an old e-buddy's blog a few moments ago (one who promised he was going to stop blogging, but like so many of us, failed to do so) and found an interesting way to approach the problem of evil:

1) Events have happened in the world that are such that any person able to prevent them would be morally obligated to do so.
2) Premise (1) is logically incompatible with God defined as an all-powerful, morally perfect being.
3) Therefore, God does not exist.

Premise (2) I take it, is simply a fact of logic: to be all-powerful is to be able to prevent the sort of events described in (1), and to be morally perfect is to fulfill all of one's moral obligations, so if there were a God so defined, there would be no such events as described in (1).

As for (1), it appears to be almost universally agreed upon. A few decades ago it was reported that a woman named Kitty Genovese had been murdered and no one had done anything to stop it even though dozens of people had heard her screams. The story provoked some deep-soul searching and discussions about human psychology, all of which took for granted that the right thing to do had been to stop the murder. The international community has been harshly criticized for failing to do more to stop the Rwanda genocide. The current administration had been harshly criticized for failing to do more to rescue people from Hurricane Katrina.

Chris has emphasized here the concept of moral duties or moral obligations; I think this approach to the PoE is very important, and highlights a basic starting presupposition that some Christians may subconsciously hold: that God has no obligations or duties towards its creation(s). Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative was focused here, on what we are obligated to bring about by the nature of moral normativity. He argued that we must always act in such a way that our behavior is compatible with a sort of absolutism; or, that we can only justify our moral behaviors if they are universally true and correct.

This is where the disconnect occurs for believers in God.

While they will heartily agree that they are morally obligated to care for and protect their children from harm, they hold no such absolutism about this moral issue towards God. God can do whatever it feels like doing -- arbitrarily deciding to protect this or that prophet while at the same time neglecting a massive proportion of the earth's population. When they claim that God has to give us free will, they commit petitio principii: they are claiming that God's first obligation is to allow its creation to be free, rather than acting on behalf of the creation's best interests.

This logic certainly would not apply to the parent-child relationship, and most believers would agree to this. They would almost certainly agree that any parent who allowed his toddler to run through the house with scissors was not a moral, good parent, despite the justification offered by said parent that, "I just wanted to maximize little Johnny's freedom!"

We've trodden this ground before, of course. But it is helpful to frame the argument in terms of moral duties, because the immediate presupposition of God's lack of moral obligations, on the part of many theists, renders this God's "goodness" fatally flawed and illogical.

Some god stuff

A few points apropos to the Religious Right:

1. Romney's followers inflated the straw poll at the "Value Voters" summit. I sincerely doubt the average Evangelical will vote for this guy.
   


2. The scandal at Oral Roberts U. keeps getting juicier.


3. From a USAToday article: Majorities of young people in America describe modern-day Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and anti-gay. What's more, many Christians don't even want to call themselves "Christian" because of the baggage that accompanies the label. A new book based on research by the California-based research firm The Barna Group found that church attitudes about people in general and gays in particular are driving a negative image of the Christian faith among people ages 16-29...The vast majority of non-Christians — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical. Such views were held by smaller percentages of the active churchgoers, but the faith still did not fare well: 80% agreed with the anti-gay label, 52% said Christianity is judgmental, and 47% declared it hypocritical.(h/t -- "This Week in God")


4. If you can't beat 'em, and don't qualify to join 'em, sue 'em! Godidiots with an education in Biblical Biology 101 are finding their admissions applications rejected, as if Young Earth Creationism is not equal to Biology:

   He was referring to the charge that the university rejected core courses using textbooks by leading Christian publishers Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book because of religious content. These included biology texts that presented evolution but also the biblical account of creation and intelligent design as alternative theories.

   Damn those liberal secular elitists! Always demanding that "alternative theories" have "supplementing evidence" that isn't, "'cause the Bible says so"!

God Finally Talks

Everyone has heard by now of Ernie Chambers' attempt to sue God. This morning I read that God was granted immunity from the suit by the Douglas County District Court and that the Almighty had a message:

It adds that blaming God for human oppression and suffering misses an important point.

"I created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is my greatest gift to you," according to the response, as read by Friend.

Oh come on, God, that canard doesn't hold up to logical analysis.

1) The free will theodicy fails under the analysis of making "freedom" an unqualified, universal highest good and goal, unconditioned by its consequences:

If you really believe that it is better to honor someone's freedom to do as they wish than to restrict that freedom when it causes harm, then you would committed to having to introduce, at every opportunity, the option to do wrong, since this represents free will, no matter the consequences. Thus, the next time your toddler asks for scissors or a knife or a gun, if you deny her, you are not being God-like and giving her unconditional freedom. That's a retarded claim, isn't it?

Also, the capacity for humans to act out their will/intentions must be separated out from the will/intent itself. The rapist who waits for a jogger in the park will only succeed if the contingencies, such as when a jogger decides to go jogging, whether she is carrying pepper spray, whether she has taken self-defense classes, whether a cop goes by at the same time...etc., etc., etc., are all correctly in place. God is supposed to be in control of these contingencies that allow evil to actually occur.

Also, why would one person's will be granted, while both another person's and God's own wills are overturned?

2) The free will theodicy fails under the burden of natural, impersonal evils:

No one wills for a tsunami to wipe out 200,000 people in Indonesia. No one wills for AIDS to eradicate millions of human beings and orphan millions more. No one wills for natural disasters and natural evils at all...except the one in control of Nature, apparently...

Quit fooling around and just admit you don't exist, God! :)

In related news, please explain to me, someone, anyone, how your 10 Commandments form the basis of our Constitutional Repupublic and its laws? Go down the list of the Bill of Rights and you find direct conflicts between the 10C and the 10A (amendments). It takes a mental contortionist to hold to the otherwise. Our laws are in no wise based on the ancient Jewish laws, and societies had laws against murder and theft and perjury long before (and long after) the Jews did.

The Problem of Evil: My take

I promised a long time ago to get around to laying out my version of the logical argument from evil against the existence of God. And here it is:

I hope to clarify my position, and I hope that, once accomplished, you will be able to respond to the precise arguments I'm making. This is long, and I've compiled most of this from various conversations I've had with people over the past few years. I just now tried to edit it all together into one long argument that evil is incompatible with God's existence -- that it is a problem for theism. I will be discussing, thus, the ancient "Problem of Evil" (PoE) and its responses.

I am summarizing the main points at the bottom to make it easier to interact with (and rebut) individual arguments I'm making.

The classic logical PoE is usually stated as (rearranged from Epicurus):

P1) The gods either can take away evil from the world and will not
P2) or, being willing to do so [take away evil from the world] cannot
P3) or, they [gods] neither can nor will [take away evil from the world]
P4) or, they are both able and willing [to take away evil from the world].
C1) If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. (if P2)
C2) If they can, but will not, then they are not omnibenevolent. (if P1)
C3) If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. (if P3)
C4) Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist? (this is a reductio ad absurdum for P4)

The only rational answer is -- all-powerful and all-good gods do not exist. And, if some other form or version of God exists: say, a weak one; or a morally ambivalent one...then does it deserve our acknowledgment, respect, or adoration? No. Could we be morally obligated to a God which has less compassion than we do? Less power to prevent evil? After all, we are the ones being forced, in these scenarios, to cure cancer and eradicate starvation. This is the "push a button" argument I made in my closing statement at The Academy. If we had the ability to eradicate all disease, natural disaster, starvation, &c., then we would, right? But if God has the ability to do those things, and chooses not to, then God is less compassionate and thus less good [by this metric], than we are.

And that is why I am an atheist, not an agnostic, with respect to a "tri-omni" God of goodness, knowledge and power. I do not believe in such a Being for good reason. I cannot logically discount other sorts of gods -- weak ones or morally questionable ones, but I also cannot believe in them, nor would I care to know one way or the other about them.

If we accept that God is "all-good" and "all-powerful", then the PoE is a useful argument for atheists to make. If we disagree on those two crucial premises, then of course it doesn't really matter whether evil exists or not when it comes to deciding God's existence. Some theists will argue that if there is no God, then there is no evil. This does nothing to defeat the PoE. The reason is simple: we are using the premise that evil is what God would think/say that it is, under the assumption that a God exists.

Thus even if the theist is correct, and the two claims (evil, God) are contingent on one another, then we either have both or we have neither. In other words, by this reasoning -- if there is no such thing as evil, then there is no such thing as good, and there then is no such "all-good" God, and so our argument is pointless. We may assume that evil can be defined by whatever the theist agrees that it is -- most religions incorporate elements of suffering, pain, disease, death, as "evil" and therefore those things are not going to be present in heaven/utopia. Thus we may use those particular ideas about evil to advance the argument. If the theist refuses to admit that these things are evil, then we must ask for some criteria for deciding just what evil & good really are.

If we say that the notion of God must make suffering and evil different for God, then we lose the right to call God "good" for the same reason. That is, if we say, "What seems evil to us may not be evil to God," then the same thing applies to, "What seems good to us may not be good to God." And if this is true, then things like compassion, charity, kindness, self-restraint, patience, tolerance...those things are good to us. How can we say God is/has those things? If what is good to us isn't real, or doesn't represent God's view, then why do we call God "good" at all?

If allowing and causing gratuitous pain, suffering, and misery isn't evil, then we lose the basis for calling things (or God) good as well. However, no reasonable person can deny what is good and evil. It is an intrinsic part of our human nature to feel compassion, altruism, empathy...we cannot pretend we do not. And we call those things, "good". Furthermore, the moral properties we ascribe to actions, behaviors, and character based on our intuitions and perceptions are real. If they were not, then there is no such thing as morality. If no real moral properties exist, then no good and evil exist. If no good and evil exist, then God still doesn't exist! (Remember that the definition of God includes goodness.)

We must use our conceptions and perceptions of good and evil as the only basis for those things, else wise we lose any grounding for using the terms at all. Ergo, if there is a God who does not believe those same things about morality as we do, nor act so as to bring about those things we would, why would we call this God "good" at all? If you tell me you would, indeed, cure cancer if you could, because it is moral to do so, but then say that God can but won't, haven't you just admitted God is allowing unnecessary evil? We can't logically make those characteristics square with the sort of God who would introduce, allow, or even possibly make the sorts of evil that we all observe and experience.

Importantly, the concept of an omnibenevolent & omnipotent God carries with it moral obligations. Precisely, God is bound to create the best of all possible worlds by his nature and duty -- this follows from the definition of what it means to have perfect goodness and all power.

Let Y = the sum evil of the universe (totality; from start to finish)
Let S = any single act or instance of evil in the universe
Let G = the sum good of the universe (totality; from start to finish)
Let P = free will
Let X = our world with good G and evil Y
Let Z = the world in which there is a total evil Y minus at least one act of evil S
Let Q = the world in which there is only G and no Y (and thus no S) -- the best possible world

My argument is this in general terms:

God is bound to make world Q by his nature and duty to his creatures. However, if God is incapable of making Q, but is capable of making either Z or X, then God must make Z. That is, Z is by definition a "more good" world than X, and God is bound by his character and morally obligated to create Z rather than X, and to create Q rather than Z (if possible). If you claim this is not possible, then omnipotence comes into question.

If we look at our world and see any evil, then we know we are not in world Q. If we then examine our own world and are able to mount an argument that God could have reduced the evil of this world by any amount (S), then we have shown that we live in X rather than Z. This is automatically indicative that we have shown that the world we live in is evidence against an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

So if we look at every single instance of evil, and if you want to maintain this world is Z, not X, we are forced to say that all of these instances of evil were logically necessary in order to have Z. Then, you must argue that Z, a world with evil, is preferable to Q a world without evil, and so Z is somehow the best of all possible worlds. Usually the theist will argue that the reason Z (with evil) is better than Q (without evil) is that Y (evil) is minimized in order to maximize G (good) via some "higher good" such as "free will" (P).

If every S, each instance of evil, pain and harm are not absolutely necessary to bring about P, then it entails that we do not live in a world that is better than the world in which there is one less instance of S. And thus God is not all good, because it would've been possible to make the better world.

First, is it logically possible that,

World X > World Q?

That is, is it possible that: (G) good - (Y) evil > (G) good ?

I would maintain that it is not, by definition. Adding in any amount of evil Y automatically reduces the magnitude of G and thus takes us from the best possible world Q to a world X which should not exist if God does. This is the heart of the "best possible world" idea. So instead, the theist will typically say that world X has the "higher good" P to balance out the evil:

(G) good - (Y) evil + (P) free will > (G) good

Where the magnitude of (P) = the magnitude of (Y); so that they cancel out, or where (P) > (Y), so that we now have "better" world on the left side and "not as good as" world Q on the right. That is, it is an even better world to have evil and free will, (P) & (Y), than to have neither. The free will theodicy is an attempt to say this.

But is free will always the highest good?

Consider that most parents would agree it is not more loving to allow their young child to freely hurt themselves, and others, than to step in and stop them. The parent would even be held liable in a court of law for negligence. But why is it that God is somehow supposed to be exonerated from responsibility for giving people free will to abuse and use however they want?

If you say that free will must be the highest good, then you are committed to giving your child a knife to run through the house with whenever they want one, because "free will is more important than harm, or the evil that might occur". This takes you down a path I doubt many of you want to go. If you really believe that it is better to honor someone's freedom to do as they wish than to restrict that freedom when it causes harm, then I can outline many scenarios which would clearly demonstrate your conundrum.

You would committed to having to introduce, at every opportunity, the option to do wrong, since this represents free will, no matter the consequences.

This brings us to the responsibility of God in giving free will. This is a very important distinction, and one that most Christians ignore -- they assume that God almost has to give people free will in every situation, and that this is better than God restricting human freedom during horrible circumstances. But this begs the question by saying that (P) > (Y).
__
1) It completely ignores natural evils, like natural disaster, disease, famine, etc.

2) If the person who wants to hurt someone else has the will to commit harm, why does their will supercede the will of the person who doesn't want to be harmed? Also, it would probably be admitted that God also wills for this not to happen. So why would one person's will be granted, while both another person's and God's own wills are overturned? This is a very important issue. What serves the greater good in this?

3) The capacity for humans to act out their will/intentions must be separated out from the will/intent itself. That is, will is impotent. Will relies upon contingencies that make it possible to carry out one's intentions. A simple example is the girl jogging through the park -- her will/intent is to go for a jog and go home. The rapist waiting in the bushes has the will/intent to abduct and rape her. If it does happen, whose will is violated, and why does it occur? Contingencies such as her ability to fight off the attacker, whether or not she brought pepper spray with her, whether or not a passerby happens to come at that moment -- all of these have NOTHING to do with freedom of will. This is the problem with purporting it is necessary for the evil to occur just because of freedom of will -- that is false, God can make the contingencies such that a truly free will cannot act out its evil choices/desires, or not to such a great extent, without abrogating freedom of mind/wind/intent.

Thus God need not give someone a rock nearby when Cain wishes to crush Abel's skull. God need not place someone with delusions of grandeur and fascist aspirations to a place of power by making them articulate and smart and good-looking -- this same character God could allow polio to cripple or influenza to kill as a child. We must always recognize that simply allowing people to have free minds does not necessitate giving them the power to act on their wishes at all times.

4) Blaming the devil doesn't work: God supposedly created the devil, so this just pushes it back a step further.
__
Again, God doesn't "get off" for giving unrestricted free will to people who will abuse it -- it represents negligence on the part of whomever gives someone power that will be abused when they know ahead of time that it will, and could otherwise stop it.

Now, let us ask the question of what makes someone likely to have the will/intent to harm someone else.

We never think much about things this way, but if you believe in God, then you agree that God has restricted your free will -- often times you wish you could do many things that you are unable to act upon. The very complex topic that this opens up leads some people to believe in Calvinism/determinism, because they recognize that intrinsically, we often will to do something that we cannot accomplish, and that the reasons for our inabilities to act are always controlled by God.

Imagine, for instance, that I want to win the 100-meter race. I simply do not have the genetics for it, period. I could put all of my heart and soul into it, but never could I beat out natural athletes whose bodies are marvelously fit for such exercises. It is not in my nature. In the same way, my Saint Bernards will never attack a child and maul it to death. Both of these two things are related: my physical nature limits me (by genetics), and so does theirs. These dogs were artificially selected for their temperments and personality. However, if we could manipulate my genes, or infect my dogs with rabies, then our natures change, and so will our capacity to act. People are no more "free" than their bodies and natural inclinations make them, and thus not truly free at all.

Philosophers have dealt with this topic extensively, and they point to the source of our will as desire, and the source of our desire as our nature -- and so the question of what constitutes our nature becomes relevant. No one can deny that genetics hugely constitutes our nature, as well as how we are raised. Children who are abused will deal with pain and anger for their entire lives that, for instance, I will not. We all know people who seem to have been born with a gentle nature -- completely nonviolent. It takes much more to anger them than the average person. Let's call that person, "Ms. Q". If she is raised in a loving home and well-educated, it is completely unlikely that Ms. Q will ever feel the urge to cause someone terrible pain for fun. Why is it that Ted Bundy enjoyed causing pain for fun? As a scientist, I want to study his brain, his genes, and his environment as a child -- three things he had no real control over (he wasn't free to determine those things), and compare his to "Ms. Q's".

I would bet the ranch that I could find something physically different between Bundy's physiology and that of Ms. Q. She simply never felt the desire to harm people that he was constantly bombarded with. That desire came from an unhealthy brain. Ms. Q feels a degree of empathy that compels her to help people in need and in pain. He feels no empathy whatsoever. Who is ultimately responsible for how Bundy's brain works? For his lack of empathy? For his innate desire to harm others? I would answer: it is a random part of genetics and chemistry -- variation occurs naturally in these processes, we observe it all the time. You get an entire spectrum of traits from nature: good and bad. You would answer...?

Now, some would want to argue that God cannot intervene in human affairs, because it would introduce chaos and unpredictability into the world. C.S. Lewis made this argument once, IIRC. First, this ignores the serious issue I laid out above: who set the laws of chemistry and biology in motion, if God does exist? And if God made the laws in such a way that they would produce a Ted Bundy, could God not also have affected those same laws such that everyone was born with the personality of Ms. Q? And if God could, would God not want to? If both...then why do Ted Bundy's exist, and why aren't all of us gentle and empathetic like Ms. Q?

Some would argue that God cannot intervene because of chaos...but, God could intervene in such a way that we wouldn't even know it was happening. Some examples would include Hitler being born with a crippling disease, or that people are born with a high degree of empathy and compassion, and no urges to hurt people for fun. How would that be "chaotic"? We would know no differently. Another problem are the simple examples of senseless suffering -- like when lightning starts a forest fire and humans, deer and squirrels get burned alive and die a horrible frightened death. If the lightning never struck that particular tree, would the world be "very strange, chaotic, unpredictable"? Or would we never have known any differently?

The same scenario could apply to most human behaviors -- i.e., a person gets up and is a great mood, and doesn't want to go abduct a child that day, because God has altered their desires such that they do not feel violent. Would they know that? Or would they just go about their business, whistling and happy? If one believes that drugs can alter the state of mind to affect human emotions, moods, and desires, then why is it not possible for God to do the same?

Consider: everyone could've been born with the gentle nature of a Saint Bernard, and it is logically possible that no "Yorkshire Terrier"-type angry personality existed. If that is possible, then God has an obligation to bring about the highest good for the highest number of people. If that is not what we observe (and we obviously don't), then either: i) God isn't able, ii) God isn't willing, or iii) God doesn't exist.

Another way to put it is to consider what you would do to change someone's desires and nature if you knew they were going to do evil. If I knew that someone would wake up with the desire to abduct and rape a child, and would actually do it, what would I do? If while this person was sleeping, I injected them with some Xanax or anti-psychotic, they would wake up feeling different desires, and not even know why. In this way, I have the power to affect this desire by injecting them with a drug, and make it go away, and I would because it prevents harm. Not only would I, but I would be morally evil if I did nothing! Now, in the same sense, God not only has the power to affect this person's desires, but according to believers, God is in control of everything! And yet, God allows people to have the most twisted and insane of minds, rather than "fixing them" with a magic injection that would give them peace of mind and heart, and heal them of mental illness.

Therefore, whether by chemistry or simply by refusing to intervene when knowing the outcome, God is ultimately responsible for the configuration of the pedophile's brain that makes them lust after children. If there is a simple drug that relieves the desire to rape children (and there certainly are some -- they use them in chemical castration), and especially when the person wants to be relieved of what they themselves admit is a sickness, then why would God not fix them? There is no part of me that lusts after an innocent child, nor of most mentally healthy people. Pedophiles are mentally ill, and is it more reasonable to believe that a loving God made them that way, and that God doesn't intervene to make them mentally healthy...or that God doesn't exist? I find it more rational to believe in the last option.

Some Christians (Calvinists, for example) never employ the free will theodicy. Instead of (P) > (Y), they use some other "greater good" -- call it X. Typically X = redemption, or building character, etc. The idea is that there can be reasons for terrible things happening that humans cannot know, and that these things lead to X.

One immediate problem with this is that some suffering brings about no "learning" or "character building" or "redemption" whatsoever -- miscarriages/infant death, suffering that leads to death, animal suffering, senseless random acts of natural disaster, &c. Furthermore, this sort of pain and suffering would lead many to learn that this is evidence of either: i) a callous God, ii) a weak God, or iii) a non-existent one. And so the idea that it would give us a reason to call out to God (teaching us dependence, or something like that) is contradicted by the millions of people who see this same evil and call it evidence against God's existence -- not teaching them dependence on God, but causing them to lose faith!

Many Christians use this sort of defense, or a soul-making theodicy, to try to say that God uses evil to bring about good. An analogy is often drawn to the very young child at the dentist's, where the child is undergoing pain and does not understand that the dentist is not evil, nor are the parents for taking the child to the dentist. However, the failure of this analogy is simple: if God is all-powerful, then God could bring about this good in another way. If the parent were powerful enough to choose between: i) giving the child fluoride in the water to prevent their tooth-related issues and, ii) letting the child develop those issues, and then go through pain to fix them, then we would say that any parent who chose (ii) over (i) was evil. Now we might say that our conception of good and evil is flawed to try to rescue this, or our understanding of God is, but then we sabotage the very definitions that we ascribe to God.

On the issue of "there could always be a morally compelling reason for God to allow evil", then, we might stop and think for a moment. Is it logically possible? There could indeed be purple unicorns floating through the universe -- that is a distinct logical possibility, although it is not physically feasible or believable. I would argue, though, that just as circles cannot have 90-degree angles, so it is impossible for someone who is all-good and all-powerful to be "compelled" to do anything evil or allow anything evil to occur.

But for the sake of argument, let us grant, for a moment, that both are logical possibilities. We still cannot believe on simple speculations. We can only judge truth by what we know. We are not being rational if we ignore the evidence in front of our face in order to dream up scenarios on how things might otherwise be. In the same way that you do not actually believe in that unicorn, you likewise need not believe in this outlandish possibility that God could be compelled to allow/cause evil.

Furthermore, I do not think it possible for an all-good and all-powerful God to be trapped into this sort of situation, like the kid at the dentist above, and God being compelled somehow to choose (ii) over (i). In the analysis of what those "omni" terms mean, I do not comprehend how God could ever be "cornered" in this way -- forced to choose to allow evil. In the first place, God never has to create anything, or do anything, if God is all-complete and perfect. Therefore, it seems to follow logically that this option is always available to God, and therefore, God could never be compelled to do anything whatsoever. No matter what, the possibility that God could've existed in Its/His own perfect eternal stasis serves as a defeater for the argument that God could've been compelled in this fashion.

_____

tried to make the following points:

i) The PoE is about "omni" gods, not other gods. If those other gods exist (like the Homeric gods), they don't deserve our respect or worship.

ii) Each instance of evil must be necessary

iii) Our world must be the greatest of all possible worlds

iii) If the possibility for evil and good are contingent upon God's existence (i.e., if they aren't real things without a god), then the theist begs the question, and also my PoE is now pointless -- because this circularity means that if evil doesn't exist, then God doesn't exist.

iv) The argument that (G) good - (Y) evil + (P) free will > (G) good is flawed; it begs the question. It must be argued that (P) > (Y). Also, why would one person's will be granted, while both another person's and God's own wills are overturned?

v) If you really believe that it is better to honor someone's freedom to do as they wish than to restrict that freedom when it causes harm, then you would committed to having to introduce, at every opportunity, the option to do wrong, since this represents free will, no matter the consequences.

vi) The capacity for humans to act out their will/intentions must be separated out from the will/intent itself. God is in control of the contingencies that allow evil to actually occur.

viii) Changing the definitions of good and evil for God makes those terms useless in reference to God. If you say, "Red is different for me than you," and if we are both looking at a stop sign, then would you call it what I call it, or what you call it? Thus, if the things we consider to be good aren't fully and perfectly upheld by God to be good (e.g., avoiding harm), then calling this same god "all-good" is illogical.

ix) Blaming the devil doesn't work: God supposedly created the devil, so this just pushes it back a step further.

x) People are no more "free" than their bodies and natural inclinations make them, and thus not truly free at all. Our desires and natures determine the direction of our will -- humans never desire to drink motor oil, for instance, unless they are mentally ill. Who is ultimately responsible for our nature and desires?

xi) Re: "soul-making theodicies" -- some suffering brings about no "learning" or "character building" or "redemption" whatsoever -- miscarriages/infant death, suffering that leads to death, animal suffering, senseless random acts of natural disaster, &c. Furthermore, this sort of pain and suffering would lead many to learn that this is evidence of either: i) a callous God, ii) a weak God, or iii) a non-existent one.

xii) Just as circles cannot have 90-degree angles, so it is impossible for someone who is all-good and all-powerful to be "compelled" to do anything evil or allow anything evil to occur. No matter what, the possibility that God could've existed in Its/His own perfect eternal stasis serves as a defeater for the argument that God could've been compelled in this fashion.

xiii) Given that (xii), as well as all the rest of the above, we can immediately conclude that evils occur which did not have to occur. This indicates the world could have been better, and thus an all-good all-powerful god doesn't exist.

"God Hates the World"

This brought tears to my eyes. But for all the wrong reasons...especially the little child at the end singing about how it's too late to change his mind.

"...PROUD SINNERS!"
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism

A flash of inspiration

Seattle's the Stranger sent 31 writers to 31 different churches (spanning Islam, Christianity, Judaism & Bahai) on the same Sunday to come back and write of their experiences.

I was just inspired. Would it be a good idea for a freethought group to send groups of 2 & 3 members to different churches (importantly, spanning different faiths) and come back and write of their experiences and impressions? Maybe select an atheist, agnostic & believer for each team?

Come back and report the good, the bad and the ugly? hmmmm....*pensive chin rub*
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism

7-year old hellfire preacher

Gag.

Meet the next Benny Hinn. Marjoe got started even earlier.

And Roanoke, of all places...geez.
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion

Review of Physics-based Theological Arguments

Retired Prof. of Physics Mark Perakh has just posted a great review of physicist Joseph Stephen M. Barr's cosmological arguments for god's existence.
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Atheism as Religion with Respect to the 1st Amendment

My wife received a letter from her uncle Tom McKnight, pastor of a church in Pounding Mill, that I wanted to share an excerpt from, and a piece of my response to. He said (in part):

It is a good thing to question our faith, because if we can’t question our faith and still believe, then we have no faith in the first place. But while we are questioning, we need to examine how deep and powerful or how shallow our Christian experience was. And every true intellectual I knew at Berea and at Virginia Tech went through a questioning phase in their faith. I went to a great number of meetings and seminars lead by atheists and agnostics at Berea and Virginia Tech, because I wanted to hear their thinking and read what they were reading. I hope that [Daniel] reads more and more and explores the entire realm of intellectual thought on atheism while he is still forming his theories. Because, honestly, he has not had enough time to process enough information to totally change his mind yet, unless he is a person who leaps from one faith to another throughout his life on emotion. And, ironically, this is one of the criticisms that atheists use against Christians—that we base our faith on emotionalism Atheism is a faith, and atheists are believers, according to the Supreme Court.

Eddie Tabash has a great paper summarizing the legal interpretations of the Establishment Clause. I wrote him back and said (in part):

I thought one of your points below worth responding to at length regarding "atheism is a religion". This largely depends on your choice of definition for "religion". There are many different dictionary definitions, and some of them would indeed include atheism, where religion is defined as "a set of beliefs" or something similar. But many definitions include some mention of the supernatural and/or a deity, which obviously excludes atheism as a religion.

I found an excellent review of this complex issue in a Harvard law journal on human rights:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/gunn.shtml

The Supreme Court (and other courts) have taken the position that atheism should be legally protected as a religious freedom -- i.e. the freedom of not practicing religion at all. And so they have had to confer religious protections to people whose religious freedoms were violated.

A long time ago in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), the Court made a footnote in which secular humanism was given religious status in order to protect a nonbeliever from being given a religious test for office:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcaso_v._Watkins

Much more recently (2004), the Court clarified issues surrounding the freedom of the states to provide funds to further religious education in Locke v. Davey. A student received a state scholarship, but was not allowed to use the money to attend a religious school to become a minister. They had two conflicting issues -- the freedom of religion in which things like "religious persecution" are protected, versus the issue of church-state separation in which the government cannot give aid to one religion at the exclusion of others. They had to weigh the definitions of "religion" as whether getting a theology degree was a religious pursuit, and if so, whether his right to religious non-discrimination was being violated by withholding the scholarship.
http://atheism.about.com/library/decisions/fund/bldec_LockeDavey.htm
http://www.restorethepledge.com/FACTS/sermons/sermon004.html

In the latest high-profile case (2005), Kaufman v. McCaughtry, a Wisconsin prisoner was denied the right to form a study group composed of nonbelievers, because prison officials declared that only religious groups could form such groups, and that the prisoners were nonreligious. The case was complex (as they usually are), but the federal appeals court (7th) decided that the prisoners were being religiously discriminated against, even though they were explicitly nonreligious.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/195836.htm
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/court36.htm
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/361FFJUD.pdf

I think the best way to summarize it is this: in issues concerning individual liberty, the courts have ruled that atheists are protected from religiously-affiliated discrimination and religious faith tests for public office -- they use the sort of definition like "a set of beliefs about human existence, values, etc." so that they can protect *all* individuals from these issues.

In issues concerning church-state entanglement, the courts use a stricter definition -- religion in that sense must have some element of the supernatural or a deity in order to fail the Lemon Test. So while atheism is undeniably a set of beliefs *about* God and gods in general, it is (obviously) the antithesis of faith in those entities, and is thus not a religion under definitions which include an element of the supernatural, which is almost *every* definition of religion:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=define:religion

I would conclude by saying that atheism : religious faith :: bald : hair. Baldness is a state pertaining to and concerning hair (the absence thereof), just as atheism is a state pertaining to and concerning religious faith (the absence thereof). It means one lacks faith in a deity, not that one, "has faith that no deity exists."

I'm sure others could go on for days with this somewhat-complex topic on the intersection of law and atheists' 1st Amendment protections, but I thought the simple excerpt one worth sharing.

Religious and Church-state Issues

Last night, Larry King had on some talking heads (big names) to discuss religion and politics:

They are, in Louisville, Kentucky, Reverend Albert Mohler, Jr. president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Time.com described him as "the reigning intellectual" of the Evangelical movement in this country. And in Washington is David Kuo, the Washington editor of Beliefnet.com, the best-selling author of "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction." He's former special assistant to President Bush, deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives.

In Orlando is Reverend Jim Wallis, best-selling author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It." He's president and executive director of "Sojourners"

"Call to Renewal;" editor-in-chief of "Sojourners" magazine.

In Washington, Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He's a best- selling author, including the book, "Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom."

And in Boston, our man, David Gergen, who served as White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton; editor-at- large, "U.S. News & World Report"; and professor of public service at Harvard's JFK School of Government.

You can pretty much predict the dialogue. I like how Wallis tries to pretend the religious litmus test clause of the Constitution isn't really that important...cause we need to know a candidate's "moral compass". Riiiiiiiight. What tells us the character of a candidate isn't their professed belief, but their record of action and behavior. It takes little effort to convince people with words how much you love Jebus, but it takes a bit more to show a lifetime of consistent moral behavior and strong principles. Why people on the Religious Right are so easily suckered by speeches, in the presence of contradindicating evidence, (think Newt Gengrich) is beyond me.

The full transcript of the show and a few clips online.

This is old news, but I had to put my $0.02 in on the David Paszkiewicz issue -- if I, as a high school teacher, had said that God was a fairytale and that we evolved from material causes only, I would be fired. There is no doubt about it. And I completely respect that: teachers should not have the ability to use their classroom as a platform on religious views. But this teacher gets away with telling kids *IN CLASS* that they'll go to hell if they don't accept Jesus and that the Big Bang is "unscientific". Just because some of the board members agree with him; not because what he said wasn't unconstitutional. I hate double standards like this.

Remember the dumbass I mentioned who sued her church when she was "slain in the spirit" and got injured? She won the case. Only in America, folks...
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion, Church-state, Politics, Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Dust in the Wind

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein

It is an empirically-proven fact that most people believe what their parents/local culture believe with respect to politics, religion and philosophy in general.

Like it or not, we are largely the products of our genetics and upbringing, the former of which is determined by blind chemical processes, the latter by chance -- no one chooses their parents or culture.

I spoke with an old friend yesterday, a very intelligent man -- did his chemistry postdoc at Harvard -- who told me that believing in God helps him be a better person, and to believe in things that he otherwise would have a hard time believing in. He told me that it really didn't matter to him whether it was true if God existed or not; he used religion as a way to enhance his life and outlook. Given the above quotes and facts of the matter regarding who we are and what we believe, I can see his point. That's why I'm not an evangelical atheist.

My problem is that I can't make myself believe in something that I find lacking evidence, or something contradicted by evidence. And that's why I'm an atheist with respect to the Western concepts of God and agnostic with respect to some Eastern and philosophical concepts of a god (nexus of causality, grounding of existence, etc.).

...while we may be dust in the wind, we're stardust, at least. Moby sang that we're all made of stars. All of us. That comforts me a bit.

This resonates with me today. I don't know why, but maybe you will.
________________
Technorati tags: God, Religion, Politics, Philosophy