The Kierkegaard Gambit-1: Excuses for the lack of evidence

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

I have noticed an interesting development in discussions of whether god exists. The new/unapologetic atheists have been relentless in hammering home their basic message that in the absence of any evidence in favor of the existence of god, it makes no sense to believe in such an entity. It is not a very difficult argument to understand. The position of the new/unapologetic atheists follows that of the very old ‘new’ atheist Bertrand Russell, who advised that “it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it is true.” (Skeptical Essays, I (1928).) Or, as I said in a previous post that describes my basic assertions: “There is no more credible evidence to believe in god, heaven, hell, and the afterlife than there is for fairies, Santa Claus, wizards, Elohim, Satan, Xenu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and unicorns.”

This laser-like focus on the need to produce evidence for god has put religious believers in a quandary. Of course ‘god’ is the name of a slippery and malleable concept and believers often try to evade any pointed criticisms of god’s existence by saying that the god the atheists deny is not their concept of god and so those arguments do not apply to them. So let’s define what at least some atheists define as god. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion (p. 31) defines the god that he finds implausible and it is as good a definition as any: “there exists a supernatural, superhuman intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.”

One can add that atheists are philosophical naturalists. Julian Baggini in his Atheism: A Very Short Introduction explains the meaning of an atheist’s commitment to naturalism:

What most atheists do believe is that although there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical, out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values – in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life. (quoted in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, p. 13-14)

It should perhaps be clarified that the basic problem that atheists have is with a god that shares the same world as us and whose existence has some impact on the world. If believers want to postulate god as some entity wandering around in an alternate universe distinct from our own that has absolutely no contact with our universe or as some kind of metaphor that also has no empirical consequences in this world whatsoever, they can knock themselves out and we atheists would not be concerned (or even interested) in the slightest. We would pay as much attention to them as we would to people discussing whether unicorns are silver or white.

Atheists have thus set a clear target for religious believers to aim at and refute: Show us the evidence for your god. After all, most religious people believe in a god, defined as a supernatural creative intelligence who is at the very least the creator and guider of our own universe. Surely there must be at least some incontrovertible evidence of his existence? The same goes for the existence of the soul or for miracles or the afterlife.

But such evidence for a ‘supernatural creative intelligence’, which is the kind of god that atheists seek to refute because it has empirical consequences, has never been produced. This has put religious apologists deeply on the defensive because they know that after millennia of trying, they simply cannot point to any concrete and credible evidence for the existence of such a god.

It can be argued that the entire field of theology is based on trying to specify the characteristics of an entity for which there is no credible empirical evidence whatsoever. It should not be surprising then that there are so many religions offering so many versions of god, and that even within religions there are sects and divisions each with its own variations. In fact, if you get down to the level of a single individual, each person can argue in favor of a purely idiosyncratic god that appeals just to that individual alone. In the absence of any evidentiary requirement, how could you ever prove that person wrong? I suspect that if you take any two people who belong to the very same sect and go to the very same church/synagogue/mosque/temple and ask them to list the properties of their god, they will still not be able to agree on what their god is like. Such a lack of consensus is an indicator that we are dealing with a fictitious entity that never makes contact with the empirical world.

Instead of concrete evidence being provided, what is offered range from vague generalities such as ‘everything in the world is evidence for god’ to pointing to alleged miracles whose miraculous nature disappears under close scrutiny. Some naïve believers sometimes appeal to personal experience (They “feel” god’s presence; god “speaks” to them, they have a “relationship” with god, etc.) but such claims are indistinguishable from any other form of delusion. Others have tried to turn the lack of evidence into a virtue, by saying that god does not want to make it easy for us to believe by providing clear evidence because he believes that faith in the absence of evidence is a virtue. Again, they do not provide evidence to support how they know that their god has this curious notion that evidence about his own existence is a bad thing when it is so obviously a good thing in every other aspect of life.

More sophisticated religious believers want to preserve their credibility as supporters of science and realize that miracles are not only in contradiction to the laws of science, they can be and have been easily explained away. They know that personal feelings and emotions are not credible as evidence. They realize that making a virtue out of the lack of evidence is obviously special pleading at a laughable level.

So what options are left to them? In the next post in the series I will discuss two strategies that are adopted: The Nineteenth Century Gambit and the Kierkegaard Gambit.

POST SCRIPT: Author Terry Pratchett on religion

The alleged arrogance of atheists-5: Rhetoric in politics and religion

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

For earlier posts in this series, see here.

In a response on the Machines Like Us website as to whether my three assertions:

  1. There is no more credible evidence to believe in god, heaven, hell, and the afterlife than there is for fairies, Santa Claus, wizards, Elohim, Satan, Xenu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and unicorns.
  2. Science and religion are incompatible worldviews.
  3. The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural.

[Read more…]

The alleged arrogance of atheists-4: More on the conversion question

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

For earlier posts in this series, see here.

I want to address the crux of Jared’s objections to my post on the alleged arrogance of atheists, which was that my hope for a world without religion was essentially also a call for the elimination of religious people.
When we seek to eradicate what we think are false or harmful beliefs that are held by people close to us, are we trying to “wish them away” as individuals? Of course not. What we seek is to improve their lives on the assumption that believing things that are supported by evidence and have the potential of being true is better for people than believing things that have no evidentiary support and are likely to be false.

In that sense, I understand better the desire of evangelical Christians and Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses to convert the world to their beliefs. They are at least being consistent in wanting to spread what they believe to be true, though I disagree with their methods of thrusting their views on people, even strangers, without first ascertaining whether they want to discuss them.

So Jared, I am trying to convert you to atheism, just as I am trying to convert every reader of this blog who is a believer. Indeed, much of all forms of communication are attempts at persuasion over something or other. I do it not to “wish you away” but because I think you would be better off for being an atheist than a religious believer. It is no different from my attempts to convert people in general away from any racist, sexist, xenophobic, and any other form of bigoted views that they may hold that I think harms them and society at large. They too may resist. But to not expose people to alternative views in an attempt to wean them away is to not do them any favors. In fact, I think it is wrong to shield people from criticisms of their ideas because having one’s ideas critiqued are an important component of learning and growth. People may disagree and retain their beliefs, but that is a choice they have to make.

So if I think that trying to convert people to one’s point of view makes sense, why I am not knocking on people’s doors like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses or standing on street corners like the Jesus people, handing out tracts containing the doctrines of atheism, which would consist of blank sheets of paper? Why don’t I channel every conversation with relatives, friends, and colleagues into discussions about atheism? As a matter of fact, I almost never initiate the topic of religion in those situations and it is almost always the case that it is other people who initiate such conversations with me because they are curious about my views. And in those private conversations, I simply state what I believe and why, and counter their arguments for god. That’s it. There is no atheist equivalent of the ‘altar call’, of asking people to come to Jesus.

I do not try to convert people in person because personal relationships involve many facets and one cannot easily walk away from conversations about unwanted topics without some awkwardness. Thrusting a topic on people is generally not a good idea. People may not be interested in discussing the topic at that particular time and are merely going to get annoyed with you for what they view as an imposition. So the people I meet personally can rest assured that I am not going to collar them and talk about atheism unless they tell me they want to.

But in the public sphere such as this blog, people are free to read or not read, agree or not agree. People can choose to enter into the conversation or walk away. Ideas can be more easily discussed and critiqued as just ideas, apart from the people holding them.

If religious people hold their beliefs so dearly that they think that any criticism of those beliefs is an attack on their right to hold those ideas or even their right to exist, that is a misconception that they themselves have to overcome. In the public sphere, any idea or belief should be freely criticized in any way. To criticize an idea or belief strongly using all the evidence, reason, and rhetoric at one’s disposal is not to seek the elimination of the people holding those ideas and beliefs. It is to seek the elimination of those ideas and beliefs.

The last issue that I will discuss in the next and final post in this series is the issue of tone, which was implied in Jared’s response but stated more directly by kaath in his response on the Machines Like Us website.

POST SCRIPT: White House duplicity

In my recent series of posts titled The End of Politics I described how the oligarchy that rules the US hides its power behind a screen of supposedly heated partisan politics. In particular, when it came to health care reform, I described how Obama and the Democrats choreographed this elaborate dance to hide the fact that they had no intention whatsoever of doing anything meaningful that would hurt the financial interests of their patrons in the health industry.

The latest White House proposals advanced in front of the so-called health care summit reveals this duplicity clearly for what it is. Glenn Greenwald dissects the charade in a must-read article.

The alleged arrogance of atheists-3: The conversion question

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

For earlier posts in this series, see here.

In the previous post, I said that the statement that Jared found offensive and hurtful is that “The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural.” He said that “I think you really don’t get how deep rooted religion is into the psyche of those that are religious or have a faith. To wish away their religion is almost to wish away them” and that it implied that I felt that “The world would be better off without Jews, Christians, and Muslims. (etc)” and that “to propose the nullification of that part of me is to propose my nullification”, and as such constituted hate speech.

Actually, I really do get “how deep rooted religion is into the psyche of those that are religious or have a faith”. After all, I was one of those people once and am still surrounded by them in the form of friends and relatives. It is this very deep-rootedness that I identify as precisely the reason why religions are so persistent despite the lack of evidence in favor of them and the abundance of counter-evidence. What I don’t understand is why that fact should earn the believers of religions a pass from criticism.

I also frankly do not understand what is meant by to “wish away” people and propose their “nullification”. I assume it does not mean that I want them exterminated! Is the desire to “wish away” certain beliefs the equivalent of wanting to “wish away” the people who hold those beliefs? Surely not. What I think Jared means is that religious beliefs are such an essential part of people that losing them destroys them as individuals.

That assertion is flatly contradicted by the fact that many people have given up their once deeply held religious beliefs (to either join other religions or become skeptics) and been none the worse for it and even come out stronger. Just because a belief is deeply held does not give it some kind of immunity. After all, people deeply hold views that are racist, sexist, xenophobic, or exhibit other forms of bigotry. Some people also label themselves by the signs of the Zodiac and infer innate qualities based on them and even act on that basis by consulting astrologers and horoscopes before making important decisions. No one would seriously argue that the world would not be better off without those beliefs or that those views should be protected just because some people identify with them strongly, or that we are hurting those people when we try to convert them away from these absurd or noxious beliefs. Why is it hate speech to encourage people to use evidence, rationality, and reason in every area of their lives?

The only reason to argue that religious belief should be treated differently from those others is because religious beliefs are obviously good or beneficial and the others obviously bad. Religions have used that trope for years to try and shield themselves from criticisms. But isn’t that the very point in dispute? I don’t think religious beliefs are good or benign, even though religious individuals can be both. For reasons that I have given before, I think a world where religion has ceased to have people in its thrall and where people no longer identify themselves by divisive religious labels would be a better world than what we have now. But why should such a view constitute hate speech?

The issue of attempted conversion seems to be another element of Jared’s discomfort with my post because he says:

I’m not asking you to stop being an Atheist.
I don’t believe you are going to Hell.
I don’t want to convert you to my way of thinking.

I would just hope that when you publicly “wish us away” that you realize it’s not friendly. And if you know it and you don’t care – then its just not nice.

As I have said before, I don’t understand this disdain towards conversion. (See here and here.) In the first of those two links I said (slightly edited):

The present situation, where some religious people seem to think that politeness demands that they should refrain from claiming superiority for their own religion, seems (within the framework of religion) contradictory. After all, religious people presumably think that their faith is the most important thing in their lives, so why be so reticent about it? Like the many debates we have had during the primary elections, why not have debates as to which religion is the best and which god is the right one to be worshipped? If we can spend so much time and energy in selecting a mere president, surely we should be willing to do at least as much for something as important as the ultimate fate of people’s immortal souls?

I for one would enjoy listening to public debates as to why any one religion is better than the others.

Addressing Jared directly for the moment, if you think that your own religion of Judaism is true and that the god of the Jews is the one true god, then what is wrong in saying so and trying to persuade other people of it? I certainly would not be “offended” by such an attempt even though I would disagree with it. Surely you are a Jew (in the religious sense, not as a member of an ethnic group) because you think that it confers some spiritual benefit to you? Why would you not want to share that benefit with others?

Next: More on the conversion question.

POST SCRIPT: Diet fads

That Mitchell and Webb Look takes on an industry that thrives on people’s ignorance.

The alleged arrogance of atheists-2: Public and private personas

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

My post about the alleged arrogant statements of atheists generated some interesting responses. In that post I asserted three basic assertions that I, as a new/unapologetic atheist make, and asked which ones would be considered arrogant or rude or offensive, which are the charges leveled most often at us. The assertions were:

  1. There is no more credible evidence to believe in god, heaven, hell, and the afterlife than there is for fairies, Santa Claus, wizards, Elohim, Satan, Xenu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and unicorns.
  2. Science and religion are incompatible worldviews.
  3. The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural.

In this short series of posts, I will address two responses because they touch on two different aspects because they raise some important issues of general interest. One is by Jared Bendis, someone whom I have known personally for many years. You can read his full comment in the original post but I will excerpt the key portions and respond to each. The other response appeared on the Machines Like Us website and was by someone named ‘kaath’ whom I do not know personally.

Jared begins:

Mano, I have read your posts for years – and I know you in person. I’m often shocked about how confrontational your posts can be. I can’t imagine any other person I know not just discussing their opinion publicly but making clear their feeling on the beliefs of others.

Today I was hurt by what I read. I don’t think you meant it to hurt – I know it wasn’t directed at me personally – and I don’t think you will care for my counterargument but I felt I needed to say it: Today your words hurt me.

Jared is expressing a view that is not uncommon for those who know me personally and also read my blog. On my recent trip to Sri Lanka a very old friend of mine from boyhood days (who is religious) asked me out to lunch just so that he could have an extended private conversation with me because he too had found my blog to be very strongly worded against religion and he found it hard to reconcile with his personal impression of me. After our lunch, he said he understood why there is a difference and maybe this series of posts will similarly clarify it for others. Or maybe not.

As I have said before, my argumentation style in private forums (in my classes or in conversations with people) is quite different from that in public forums (such as this blog or public talks) which is why I may seem to have a Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde dual personality to those who know me personally. Part of the reason for this difference is that unlike Dr. Jekyll, I have chosen to adopt a particular persona for my blog posts on atheism, for reasons I have spelled out earlier. Another reason is that people fail to distinguish the styles of discourse used in private and public forums and apply the standards that are appropriate for the former to the latter.

When you are talking with people directly, person to person, it is hard to separate an idea from the person expressing and supporting it, so it requires a much slower and gentler approach, in order to make clear that you are attacking the idea and not the person. But in public forums, ideas can and should be viewed under the clear light of reason and evidence, and even on occasion subjected to derision and ridicule, for that is the way we determine which ideas are durable and which are ephemeral, and how we distinguish between ideas that have value and the potential to be true and those that are meaningless or false.

Once an idea is out in the public forum, it is open to any and all forms of scrutiny. When you criticize ideas in public forums, you are not attacking any person, even though it is likely that many people will have identical ideas to the ones that you are attacking and may have explicitly expressed them. The people whose ideas are thus scrutinized may choose to take it personally, but that is their problem to deal with.

Coming back to the substance of my post, Jared agrees 100% with my first assertion so that is not the cause of the problems he has with my post.

While he does disagree with my second assertion that “Science and religion are incompatible worldviews”, he does not find it hurtful, so that assertion is also not one that causes offense.

It is my third assertion, that “The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural”, that he finds offensive. He says:

I think you really don’t get how deep rooted religion is into the psyche of those that are religious or have a faith. To wish away their religion is almost to wish away them.

I could read your statement as
The world would be better off without Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (etc)

And I could read your statement as
The world would be better off without Jews, Christians, and Muslims. (etc)

Now I am not saying you meant that, but, to propose the nullification of that part of me is to propose my nullification. And I read it as hate speech.

To say that my words ” The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural” can be taken to mean that I want the “nullification” of people who hold such beliefs, and to thus conclude that it is hate speech seems to me to be a stretch, and in the next post I will examine this point in more detail.

POST SCRIPT: John Cleese on genetic determinism

The alleged arrogance of atheists

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

Over at Machines Like Us, my post on introducing the label ‘Unapologetic Atheist’ started a lively debate in the comments section. In the course of it, people have once again raised the charge that unapologetic atheists (also known as ‘new atheists’) are rude and arrogant and uncivil and needlessly hostile towards religious people. (The cartoon strip Jesus and Mo comments on this charge of ‘atheist bile’.)

The catch is that we are never told exactly what statements fall under these categories. To so to try and clarify things, I will list the statements that I commonly make and I would be curious to know which ones religious people find objectionable and why. So here goes:

  1. There is no more credible evidence to believe in god, heaven, hell, and the afterlife than there is for fairies, Santa Claus, wizards, Elohim, Satan, Xenu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and unicorns.
  2. Science and religion are incompatible worldviews.
  3. The world would be better off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural.

Everything else I or any other new/unapologetic atheists write follow from these premises and are arguments designed to support and advance them. (Jerry Coyne has a nice summary of the atheists position.) So are the above statements rude, arrogant, hostile, uncivil, etc.?

To help us make a judgment, let us formulate what the opposite pole of those statements might look like:

  1. There is more credible evidence to believe in god, heaven, hell, and the afterlife than there is for fairies, Santa Claus, wizards, Elohim, Xenu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and unicorns.
  2. Science and religion are compatible worldviews.
  3. The world would be worse off without any religion or beliefs in the supernatural.

If any statement in the first set is rude, then by symmetry one should concede that so is the corresponding opposite statement. I think that I am safe in saying that most people would say that the second set of statements are completely inoffensive. In fact such statements are routinely made by religious apologists and are praised as ‘moderate’. And yet you never find atheists saying that religious people are being arrogant and rude because they say that god exists and atheists are wrong. It is this difference that is telling.

So if what we atheists say is rude and hostile, why doesn’t it hold true for the opposite? The situation is even worse than a mere lack of symmetry. Religious people don’t feel that there is anything wrong in even saying that nonbelievers are going to hell and making absurd demands in the guise of seeking accommodation. In fact, that is their standard shtick, as my conversations with the Jesus people showed. (See here, here, and here.)

I think I know what really offends religious people about what new/unapologetic atheists say and why. What they want us to say is that belief in some form of traditional religion is somehow respectable and rational to believe in. What they desperately want to avoid is having their beliefs lumped in with all the other evidence-free superstitions, like astrology or witchcraft or Scientology or Xenu or Elohim or Rael or unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. When we say that there is no credible evidence for any of these things and hence they must be treated equally, they get upset. They desperately want to distinguish themselves from what they consider to be fringe beliefs but they cannot find any meaningful criteria by which to do so. So they want us to stop reminding them of the embarrassing fact that they are no different.

If you listen to the many debates that have been held on whether god exists what you essentially hear from the religious side is the plaintive cry “Please, please don’t say that our beliefs are irrational. Please, please say that it is reasonable for us to believe in Jehovah/Yahweh/Melvin/Jesus/Harvey/Allah/Krishna/…(circle the name of your preferred god or insert your write-in candidate) and we will join you in denouncing things like astrology, witchcraft and the like.”

But of course atheists will not say that because to do so is to give up atheism and we are not going to do so without evidence.

Atheists are confident that there is no god or other form of supernatural agency. Having believers simply say we are wrong or even going to hell does not offend us because they never provide any evidence in support so why should we care? But religious people know that they have no evidence to support their belief and are embarrassed by the thought that their beliefs are irrational and unscientific, and haunted by the fear that they are wrong. Rather than shutting their own ears to avoid hearing things they dislike, they want us to shut our mouths.

Maybe I am wrong in my analysis of why believers make the charge that new/unapologetic atheists are arrogant. So here is my request to those who believe it is true: Tell me exactly what statements that the new/unapologetic atheists make that are arrogant/rude/uncivil and why.

POST SCRIPT: Bertrand Russell on atheism and its implications

This clip reminds us that the ‘new’ atheism is pretty old.

The religious atheists get even more atheistic

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)

I have been writing about the fact that as scientific knowledge advances, ultra-sophisticated Christian apologists, desperately seeking to find a way to reconcile their need to believe in a god while not contradicting science, have had to redefine god in such a vague and non-interventionist way that I felt justified in giving them the label of ‘religious atheists’.

Georgetown University theologian (and accommodationist) John Haught provides the latest example of this kind of religious backtracking by recently writing that the hitherto bedrock religious idea that there is design in life is no longer necessary for religious belief. He says:

The typically design-obsessed frame of mind through which so many devout theists, as well as staunch atheists, are looking at the question of God and evolution is a dead end both scientifically and theologically.
…
Claiming that Darwin has disposed of divine design, atheistic evolutionists assume that science has thereby wiped away the last traces of deity from the record of life. Yet they have failed to notice that the very features of evolution–unpredictable accidents, predictable natural selection, and the long reach of time–that seem to rule out the existence of God, are essential ingredients in a monumental story of life that turns out to be much more interesting theologically than design could ever be.
…
The most important issue in the current debate about evolution and faith is not whether design points to deity but whether the drama of life is the carrier of a meaning. According to rigid design standards, evolution appears to have staggered drunkenly down multiple pathways, leading nowhere. But viewed dramatically, the apparent absence of perfect order at any present moment is an opening to the future, a signal that the story of life is not yet over. (My italics)

That is interesting. So now even the lack of design is evidence for god! There goes Thomas Aquinas. There goes Paley’s watch. There goes intelligent design. The foundational argument of all religions that the cosmos exhibits features of design that are inexplicable without assuming the existence of god is thrown out the window. Instead what he talks about is the ‘story and drama of life being much more interesting’ than design could ever be. What he seems to be saying is that whether it is true or not that god exists is irrelevant. What is important is whether the explanation provides good drama. Can he be serious?

The arguments of religious atheists like Haught can be summed up simply as: Whatever science discovers, it points to god.

Some years ago, I debated intelligent design proponents in Kansas at their annual soiree. There was a large audience present consisting almost entirely of religious believers, mostly biblical literalists. During the debate, I kept hammering away at the indisputable fact that intelligent design had failed miserably to suggest a mechanism for how it operates or to generate even one prediction that scientists could look for and that therefore it could not be considered a scientific theory.

This message that there was no evidence for god must have disturbed one woman because she came up to me afterwards to give me a definition of god that she felt met all my objections. She had written it on a small scrap of paper during the session. I have kept it all these years, because I was impressed by her sincerity. Her note said:

Consider: Rendered “general” (I.E. The Law of Complex Systems) by the millions of created objects known about, (observed) daily, that: all complex systems (that we know about) owe their existence to acts of creation using planning and work by one or more intelligent living beings (not one exception). (All emphases in the original.)

We should ignore the lack of precision and coherence because it was clearly written in a hurry and spontaneously during the session itself. She was also trying to write it in what she thought was scientific language, adding to its obscurity. But what she is essentially saying is that every single thing in the world is designed, so that they all constitute evidence for the existence of god. She thought that this was a watertight definition of god that could not be refuted.

This is naïve and circular reasoning but excusable in someone who is not a professional theologian but is instead a devout believer who was thinking on the fly. But it actually makes more sense than the convoluted reasoning of Haught and other religious atheists who claim that no evidence is even necessary for god, that the question of his objective existence is also irrelevant, and that all that matters is whether god serves as a good metaphor and provides a dramatic story.

Haught’s essay presents an incredibly pathetic argument for god that basically denies god. Jerry Coyne takes it apart, point by point.

If there was ever a time to accuse someone with the cliché of making a virtue out of necessity, Haught’s piece provides it.

POST SCRIPT: That Mitchell and Webb Look on Abraham and Isaac

Truly one of the weirdest stories in the Bible. Why would anyone even want to worship a god who is such a cruel jerk?

Is there an atheist philosophy?

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.

Because of the holidays and travel overseas where internet access will be sporadic, I am taking some time off from writing new posts and instead reposting some of my favorites (often edited and updated) for the benefit of those who missed them the first time around or have forgotten them. New posts will start again on Monday, January 18, 2009.)

I received a private email from a reader of this blog asking what exactly an atheist is and pointing out that my critiques of god and religion are written with a primarily western and Christian concept of a personal god in mind. I was asked how I felt about eastern concepts derived from religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, which the reader points out, do not require belief in a personal god.

It is true that I have focused primarily on Christianity. This is because it is the religion I was brought up in and is the one I am most familiar with. I have also studied it in some depth and am aware of much of its subtleties and apologetics, and of the differences in beliefs among its various sects. If I wrote about other religions, I would be necessarily less familiar with their details and more likely to commit gross generalizations that might be considered unfair by followers of those religions.

But one can make some general statements about atheism. As far as I am concerned, atheism rejects the idea of any supernatural entity that can influence the world. It does not have to just be a personal god in the western sense. Even if the word god is not used and the idea is called a ‘force’ or ‘principle’ or ‘consciousness’ or something else, as long as it represents some non-material intelligent entity that influences the material world, an atheist is likely to reject it for the same reasons he or she rejects god, unless some convincing positive evidence is produced in its favor.

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The consequences of atheism

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.

Because of the holidays and travel overseas where internet access will be sporadic, I am taking some time off from writing new posts and instead reposting some of my favorites (often edited and updated) for the benefit of those who missed them the first time around or have forgotten them. New posts will start again on Monday, January 18, 2009.)

While atheism is not a philosophy as such, the reasons that one has for being one (mainly, the rejection of those beliefs for which there is no evidence) necessarily lead to certain consequences. Collected together, this set of results may look like a philosophy, but is not really. It is merely the playing out of the consequences of a scientific approach to every aspect of life.

For example, the same arguments that atheists use to reject the existence of god also lead them to the rejection of an afterlife. This has profound consequences for the way one lives and how one relates to others. For me, the fact that this life is all there is makes more imperative the importance of everyone being able to make the best of the one life they have. There is no heavenly compensation to satisfy the yearnings of people who are suffering here and now. All people have a right to, at minimum, adequate food, shelter, clothing, and health care, and there is no excuse for societies not being structured to provide them with those necessities.

Similarly, all people have a right to seek happiness wherever they can and with whomever they wish as long as they are not harming others. Hence gays, lesbians, and transgendered people are entitled to every right enjoyed by others, and atheists oppose objections to their behavior based on reasons like “god considers such acts sinful and they will go to hell” or because some religious text forbids it. (It is only such kinds of reasoning that is rejected. There may be atheists who disapprove of homosexuality on other grounds, such as that it is ‘not natural’ (whatever that may mean), but that is a different issue not involving religion.)

The same reasons that lead atheists to reject god also lead them to reject the idea of an independent soul that can survive the body. The problems of reconciling the idea of a non-material soul (or mind) interacting with the material brain and body are just as great as trying to figure out how a non-material god interacts with the material world. So I would argue that another corollary of being an atheist is to reject the idea of having a soul that can exist independently of the body. One can retain a concept of a ‘soul’ as long as it is merely a euphemism for the mind, a creature of the brain that ceases to exist when a person dies.

The idea that there is no god out there setting the standards of ethical and moral behavior also means that, rather than fighting to see which version of religious morality and behavior should prevail, atheists believe that we have to figure out what are the common bases on which we can live with one another in peace and justice in the world.

So in other words, the fact that atheism correlates with rejection of an afterlife and souls and religious text-based moral and ethical values means that the whole package has the trappings of a philosophy. But actually they are the almost independent consequences of having a philosophical naturalism philosophy that uses a scientific approach (empirical evidence and logical reasoning) to determine which beliefs are worthy of acceptance and which are not.

A wish for the New Year: A world without religion

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.

Because of the holidays and travel overseas where internet access will be sporadic, I am taking some time off from writing new posts and instead reposting some of my favorites (often edited and updated) for the benefit of those who missed them the first time around or have forgotten them. New posts will start again on Monday, January 18, 2009.)

The recent appearance of best-selling books by atheists strongly criticizing religion has given rise to this secondary debate (reflected in this blog and the comments) as to what attitude atheists should take towards religion. Some critics of these authors (including fellow atheists) have taken them to task for being too harsh on religion and thus possibly alienating those religious “moderates” who might be potential allies in the cause of countering religious “extremism”. They argue that such an approach is unlikely to win over people to their cause. Why not, such critics ask, distinguish between “good” and “bad” religion, supporting those who advocate good religion (i.e., those parts of religion that encourage good works and peace and justice) and joining with them to marginalize those who advocate “bad” religion (i.e., who use religion divisively, to murderous ends, to fight against social justice, or to create and impose a religion-based political agenda on everyone.)
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