Pharyngula

Posted by: 386sx | September 27, 2009 1:44 PM

What is "the" Christological narrative?

That's the one where Jesus jumps up into the sky like a giant pogo stick, I think. Clear for takeoff on runway nine!! Boing boing boing boing...

Posted by: gyeong-hwa | September 27, 2009 1:46 PM

Stop being so smug.

Mr. Pot stop calling Mr. Kettle black.

Try to deal with the actual notions of God Vishnu seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or the Jedeo-Christian God) to dismiss the concepts of God Vishnu.

They don't understand that it can easily be reversed on them.

Posted by: SEF | September 27, 2009 1:50 PM

Public Service Post (for anyone else having difficulty even getting the typekey/typepad sign-in option to appear!):

           Sign in or register with TypePad.

(I had thought sign-in was finally working properly but it seems to be on the blink again.)

Posted by: 386sx | September 27, 2009 1:52 PM

Imagine, if you will, Jesus jumping down a runway on a pogo stick, with each boing getting stronger and stronger, until the final maximal leap when he reaches the critical boing mass which propels Jesus up, up high, high up into the clouds with the angles and the birdies. This, my friends, is the Christological narrative. (I guess.)

Posted by: Draken | September 27, 2009 1:57 PM

And some of us see no reason to be nice to sewage

Rats do. Do rats pray, too, to the everfeeding God of the Sewer Pipe, I wonder?

Posted by: nomen-nescio.myopenid.com | September 27, 2009 2:07 PM

[...] ordure

PZ's either got a thesaurus, or a copy of the Principia Discordia. and i hope it's the latter, because that book's much more fun than a thesaurus.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 27, 2009 2:19 PM

it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

*big laugh*

For Nathan's intelligence's sake, I hope the Bible is the only book he has ever read.

Posted by: raven | September 27, 2009 2:23 PM

Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God - and deal with the

The fundies seriously believe in an inept, genocidal monster of a god. We deal with it and them anyway we can as a matter of simple survival.

This xian writer is so clueless he makes a bunny sitting in the middle of the road seem smart.

Posted by: Free Lunch | September 27, 2009 2:28 PM

Nathan may have been unwise in coming to your attention. It appears that he is used to less robust discussion than he is receiving now.

Posted by: Zeno | September 27, 2009 2:32 PM

I watched part of Cornerstone this morning. That's the weekly broadcast of the reprehensible John Hagee. Today, instead of inveighing against the Whore of Babylon in Rome or the Antichrist in the White House, Hagee decided it was time to revisit "name it and claim it" theology. He pointed out that it was easy to believe in a deity who answered prayers all the time. Therefore it's a test of your faith to believe in a deity who answers prayers sporadically (or not at all?). He congratulated the members of his congregation for their faith. Hallelujah (and all that).

Weirdness personified.

Posted by: Free Lunch | September 27, 2009 2:35 PM

So, for John Hagee, the perfect God is the one that does not exist. Cool. Of course, he does have the problem, now, that he has so many to choose from.

Posted by: Insightful Ape | September 27, 2009 2:52 PM

I wonder why it took us until the digital age to coin the phrase "concern troll".
Seriously, such people must have existed before there were computers...

Posted by: arrakis | September 27, 2009 3:00 PM

After reading this, I will be going off to work at a bookstore, where I will spend the next several hours in a department neighboring the Christian chunk of the "Religion" section. If I'm lucky, one of the customers perusing that religious fiction section will try to evangelize me, at which point I will proceed to break every rule on that list.

The best part? I've talked to my manager about how to handle religious wackos (not in such terms), and she has given me full reign to do as I wish, including shoving them off onto other management.

I have yet to have the same person try and convert me twice.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 27, 2009 3:07 PM

Admit that the scientific method - which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis)

Huh? Don't they have that backwards? Isn't forming a general hypothesis based on the available data an example of induction, whereas starting with a hypothesis and using it to make testable predictions relies on deduction?

that's what he's trying to say with that awkwardly vague sentence structure. the parentheses are referring to the entire sentence, not just the last part; it's supposed to be a parallel construction, but it sure does look confusing.

Posted by: SEF | September 27, 2009 3:31 PM

she has given me full reign to do as I wish

Nicely appropriate typo, if you're in some manner in charge of a department / domain.

Posted by: SEF | September 27, 2009 3:39 PM

Seriously, such people must have existed before there were computers...

Not so much, perhaps. The historical equivalent might have been professional agitators. The modern era is unusual in having so many people with so much leisure time that they can do such things without it being a paid job.

Meanwhile, there would be fewer trolls of all sorts because of the real-world consequences. Folk on the internet don't have the option of immediately bopping a troll on the nose and relatively few (albeit the worst ones!) are going to bother to stalk someone into real life. So the behaviour is less physically hazardous in this new environment and the trolls often don't learn not to do it nor do they get exterminated at any appreciable rate.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 27, 2009 3:41 PM

... we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

We have a solid contendah for the Church Sign of the WeekⓇ Contest™!

If they go for that one, try again with "We Welcome Weak Wits!"

Posted by: bastion of sass | September 27, 2009 4:13 PM

1. Stop being so smug.

Yeah, atheists! Stop being so "contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority, or correctness."

I began my advice to you with this item, because humbly chastising you about your smugness is the the best I've got.

I can't refute your arguments--what with them being based on reality and reason and all--but I can lecture you on how to have to have more humility. See how humble I was when I wrote these instructions for you? That's how it's done!

As you may perhaps note, none of my five items rebuts the validity of your reasoning and evidence, but I'm sure you'll agree that the correct attitude is, after all, more important than who's right and who's wrong.

Posted by: Aquaria | September 27, 2009 4:31 PM

"Don't be smug," from someone who thinks that all of this was done for him, that it all revolves around him, that he has a space buddy at his beck and call.

What a fucking douchebag.

Posted by: Aquaria | September 27, 2009 4:38 PM

By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by "Christians" - but understand how they're meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

Notice those rabbit ears around the first use of Christians.

Oh, yeah, because No True Christian would have a different idea of the Hebrew Asshole God/or the Christard narrative than a point 3 Christian. That's just not done.

This guy has never seen the various flavors of Baptists go at it, has he?

Posted by: BlueMonday | September 27, 2009 4:40 PM

My father prays loudly before each meal. I've often wondered how he would react if I were to announce--in no uncertain terms--my stance on the existence of a deity each time I consumed food.

"I hereby declare that I do not believe in the existence of god(s)."

Probably wouldn't go over too well, but I'm expected to respect his choice to make declarations whenever he chooses. The xians wrongly think that they hold the default position just because their religion is the most popular in this area. Logically speaking, however, they do not. I do. Yet if I say anything, it's offensive. If they do, it is not.

I guess it's because we atheists aren't actually human and don't have feelings or deserve rights.

Posted by: Pyroclasm | September 27, 2009 4:55 PM

Who would win a cage match between Karen Armstrong and Pat Robertson?

Are they using chainsaws?

And are you selling tickets?

Posted by: Mr T | September 27, 2009 5:03 PM

Stop being so smug.

How smug and self-righteous of him, to tell us how to seem nicer ... primarily by playing along with smug religious shenanigans.

Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Lay off me, I'm starving!

Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, [BLAH BLAH BLAH].

It would be interesting to hear which presuppositions count as intelligent and rational beliefs, and which don't. Is one of them a belief in your supernatural ability to make up whatever meaning you like for "intelligent" and rational"? What does any of that have to do with being nice?

Admit that the scientific method – [BLAH BLAH BLAH] – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

I hear Answers in Genesis has some "science" that is neither objective nor infallible, and Hitler used the "science" of eugenics, too! Checkmate, Atheists! Tu quoque! Seem nicer!

Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen [BLAH BLAH BLAH].

Deal with this notion: no one has ever had evidence for any kind of God. Here's another notion: your holy books are patently absurd and extremely immoral -- that's about the nicest thing I can say about them.

Posted by: frankosaurus | September 27, 2009 5:15 PM

Well, here's advice for atheists. Consider how the term "delusion" is thrown around. If it's used as a term of contempt, okay, but maybe we can find one that isn't so loaded with dualistic metaphysical attachments. It's a Wittgensteinian language-therapy thing. The other thing is that it obviously isn't working.

Posted by: Cyberguy | September 27, 2009 5:22 PM

Picking up on PZ's point, here is my attempt at a counter-list:

Five things that would make Christians seem intelligent.

1. Define your terms so that we can agree on which of your ridiculous claims we are trashing.
2. Understand the science behind your claims. Actually, if you did that you probably wouldn't be making the claim in the first place.
3. Realise that quoting the Bible is not proof, or even evidence. The closest it comes is myth, legend, bronze-age supposition and heavily edited hearsay.
4. If your argument has been completely rebutted before don't use it again, especially Pascal's Wager.
5. To be honest, if you are religious and you still want to appear intelligent, it is probably best if you simply shut the fuck up.

Posted by: Bas | September 27, 2009 5:24 PM

"Your comments is waiting moderation."

Considering my cynicism about religious censorship, I'll just put the reply I posted on that site here as well.

---------------------------------------

1. Why is explaining the evidence for evolution and the lack thereof for God considered smug? I've had a similar discussion about ghosts quite a number of times. Proposing an evidence-based explanation for something is not necessarily smug.

2. "We want the undecideds". Good for you, but saying the other side should keep their mouth shut when you're talking to these people is like saying the defense should not say anything during trial, it doesn't work that way.
As for #2 in comment #15: In many cases, I can appreciate the sentiment, but once is quite enough. More often than not, however, the idea of Hell was used on me as a threat rather than a warning. If your arguments are too weak that you have to resort to the threat of eternal torment to get people to come to your side, you may want to rethink your argument.

3. This was the point that made me slap a Poe's Law verdict on this article. Many things described in the Bible about the structure and functioning of the universe are demonstrably wrong. And we would not consider these things particularly complicated these days, I would think that the "creator" would get these things right, even if the people at the time did not.

The God invoked by so many Christians is a logical impossibility. Consider the traits of all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving and the concepts of Heaven and Hell. I'm sure you can see the inconsistencies (even if you do not draw any conclusions from them). You may consider this a strawman, in which case I will point you to point 5, this is the christian God as I've always heard it.

4. The scientific method generally starts with an observation. Then comes the hypothesis which we then try to prove OR DISPROVE. That last bit is important. Scientific articles that disprove hypotheses are as highly valued as the ones that do, as long as the science is done right.
Due to all kinds of circumstances, you would be right in saying that science is not absolutely objective or infallible. However, the point of science is that it is open to being proven wrong (consider phlogiston theory for instance) and either adjusting or rejecting these previously held ideas to account for the new observations or evidence.
No such checks exist for religion, it seems.

In response to Bob's first comment about planes going into buildings.
I think the author's use of the word "abuse" was meant as "support one's own views over reality" rather than "incite violence". Of course, where it concerns science, I wouldn't agree with either definition, but I figured it be worth mentioning.
Scientists that "abuse" science tend to not have particularly long academic careers (see Andrew Wakefield).

5. This is one I've heard before, too. First of all, dealing with the concepts of God "within it's context" is virtually impossible. We can't quote the entire Bible when considering a single argument. Any excerpt/quotation is by its very definition "out of context". What matters is that all relevant information to that excerpt is discussed. So, when saying that homosexuality is an "abomination", it is relevant to the context to say that the same thing is said about shellfish. It is not relevant to the context to say that Jesus was resurrected.

The problem is that there isn't just one interpretation of what the Bible means to say. Quite often when an atheist argues against a position you don't hold, Nathan (I'm presuming that you're the author of this article), it may not necessarily be a strawman.
I've had several discussions with Jehova's Witnesses (I was bored and had nothing else to do, sue me). And yet, even though they supposedly belong to the same version of faith, the people I had these discussions with had some radically different views on what their God had to say. And that's just within their own denomination.
So, while I'll admit to sometimes exaggerating points to make my own, it may not always be the strawman you imagine it to be.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | September 27, 2009 5:29 PM

JohnnieCanuck @ 50;

"Now that you're back, the agony is bearble. (-:"

Damn it! Spelling fail already. Rev BDC, its all your fault!

Just call me Ursus Minor . . .

Posted by: Cactus Wren | September 27, 2009 5:34 PM

Am I correct in my idea that #5 translates as "Stop describing my doctrines in such unflattering terms!"?

Because one thing I've found is that TrooBeleevers hate when I restate their doctrines in non-sugar-coated terms. They like to say "Only people who have acceptedthelordjesuschristastheirpersonalsavior can get into Heaven", but they hate when I make it as specific as, "Does that mean I am going to Hell?" They like to say "It was the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross that saved us from our sins", but hate when I say, "Because God apparently doesn't care who suffers and bleeds and dies, as long as someone does. He has to be appeased with blood and agonized death". They like, incredibly, to say "God doesn't send anyone to Hell! People send themselves! He doesn't want anyone to go there!", but hate it when I say, "Does that mean God had nothing to do with the existence of Hell? It was already set up this way when he got here, and there's nothing he can do to change it?"

Posted by: sqlrob | September 27, 2009 5:46 PM

Well, here's advice for atheists. Consider how the term "delusion" is thrown around. If it's used as a term of contempt, okay, but maybe we can find one that isn't so loaded with dualistic metaphysical attachments.

How about "willful ignorance". Better?

Posted by: Sili | September 27, 2009 5:59 PM

Praise th' LAWD! (MWBTBHNA) Smoggy's back!

Welcome, fr Smoggy! Thou hast been misst!

Posted by: BobbyEarle | September 27, 2009 6:01 PM

I'd rather be unseemly.

Yup.

Posted by: frankosaurus | September 27, 2009 6:15 PM

How about "willful ignorance". Better?

It's advice for atheists in their peaceful moments to not get an overly hardened view of character flaws that might themselves be erroneous. But when it comes time for war, then let the ridicule fly!

Posted by: anti_supernaturalist | September 27, 2009 6:28 PM

just a wee sprat...but, there are Very Big Fish

PZ...the energy consumed by sprat-blasting greatly exceeded the nutritional value of the sprat blasted. The deluded faithful merely repeat what they've been told. And you got distracted.

Faith provides no reasons — consequently xianity must indoctrinate, lie to, and punish its members. It must feed upon the faithful to enrich itself in order to buy political clout. Follow the money: millions served junk food faith; billions raked in.

Xians are beneficiaries of unequaled fraud -- a 2,000+ year old, world spanning, immensely profitable Ponzi scheme.

We must dismantle their celestial God Fraud.

the anti-supernaturalist

Posted by: Susan | September 27, 2009 6:35 PM

Christians also don't get to play the humility card, anyway.

Absolutely. It would be really hard for us to be more arrogant than someone who claims, based on zero evidence, that he has the one and only line to Universal Truth.

Posted by: Sastra | September 27, 2009 6:37 PM

2. Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

There's something very smug about this tactic of going after the weak, confused, and unprepared, and keeping your killer persuasive arguments well away from anyone who's thought carefully about the issue, and come to a different conclusion. It's a bit like only dating people with low self-esteem, so you don't have to work so hard to be liked -- but insisting that you're a major catch, nevertheless.

Meeting up with the best of the opposition, and testing your ideas takes guts, and the kind of humility that isn't afraid to lose. You let go of ego when you force yourself to care more about the issue itself, than whether the atmosphere in which you bask, is pleasant and nice.

It's those people whose weak ideas are coupled with an even weaker need for approval who whine about "negativity," and the importance of having an easy, receptive, responsive audience. That's smugness: telling someone they're wrong is nowhere near as self-seeking as refusing to engage in real debate.

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | September 27, 2009 6:46 PM

I was going to say "I posted my response, but it is too long to reproduce here"... then I saw Smoggy's post. So...

1. Stop being so smug.

This “smugness” to which you object
I’d invite you to closely inspect:
Go on, open your mind,
Take a look, and you’ll find
It’s not smugness—we’re simply correct.

Your description’s a bit of a mystery
When compared to a glance at the history—
You know God’s mind so well
You consign us to Hell
And you think it’s our rhetoric that’s blistery?

You claim to be humble and meek
Though for God you’re entitled to speak
In that book on your shelf,
Jesus says so himself!
There’s hypocrisy in your critique.

2. Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Imagine my shock and dismay—
It’s not me that you want? Well, ok…
But we still may collide;
See, I can’t stand aside,
So I’m here—between you and your prey.

“Undecideds” deserve to be free
From your bronze-age mythology, see?
So although you’re upset
That I pose you a threat,
I’m afraid that we’ll never agree.

3. Admit that the debate about God's existence is complex - and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

This is something I’ll surely admit—
One could think that a god was legit,
And may speak through a book,
Into which you may look…
If your presuppositions were shit.

Well, of course the debate is complex—
Why, the rules are designed to perplex!
An omnipotent being
Who hides from our seeing?
Of course such a concept should vex!

I have a book, too, you could buy!
And I’m really a reasonable guy—
If you’d just call me “God”
(I’ll admit, it feels odd)
I would (unlike Jehovah) reply!

4. Admit that the scientific method - which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) - is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

While it’s simple to suss out your aims
As your strawmen are playing at games
An empirical test
Can put questions to rest—
Are there any to question your claims?

You may claim we are one and the same,
Though I think you know better—for shame!
Unless you will admit
Your faith might not mean shit,
Then your challenge is nothing but lame.

5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God - and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by "Christians" - but understand how they're meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

Your advice would be all sorts of fun
If, indeed, such a thing could be done!
With cacophonous voices
Of myriad choices
You want me to stay true to one?

Just imagine my terrible plight—
I must find the religion that’s right,
Though the simplest look
In a history book
Shows, for centuries, all of them fight!

It is more than a little bit chilling
When one sees how incredibly willing
The believers in God
From an alternate squad
Are disposed, for His sake, to do killing!

So please tell me, now, which one is true?
I would be as enlightened as you!
I would argue just one
(It would really be fun!)
And I’d do it, if only I knew!

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/09/answer-in-limerick-form.html

Posted by: Iris | September 27, 2009 7:12 PM

@Kel:

And to all those who claim there can be harmony between science and religion, how can they honestly say this when theists time and time again downplay science?

2 thoughts: First is that religion often seems compatible with science in the mind of the theist, in the sense that their god is by definition at the root of everything that happens or exists. To use the computer example, sure it may work because of transistors, but the discoverer of transistors was himself guided and inspired by god. Same "logic" at work when theists thank god for saving the life of a loved one - and not the paramedics, doctors, critical care nurses, etc. who pulled out everything science-based medicine has to offer. See, it was god that put those people there, inspired them to go to school, guided them to that exact time and place. A true miracle! Isn't god great? Their view is self-perpetuating, because anything that exists or happens can be traced back to god acting at some level.

Second, you can bet if science were to yield any actual evidence for, say, a 6,000-year-old earth, it would be shouted endlessly in the faces of atheists. Smugly.

Posted by: Sastra | September 27, 2009 7:14 PM

Cuttlefish, OM #71 wrote:

I was going to say "I posted my response, but it is too long to reproduce here"... then I saw Smoggy's post. So...

Well, thank God you saw Smoggy's post!

Another damn fine bit of poetry. Both of you. But you're still Pharyngula Laureate.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 27, 2009 7:20 PM

They're concerned about style because they can't win the battle of substance.

Amen Brother/Sister...

Posted by: Peter G. | September 27, 2009 7:39 PM

There is but one thing that would make Christers nicer. All they have to do is give it up.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | September 27, 2009 7:58 PM

Bravo to both Smoggy and Cuttlefish. It's not every blog that has two such accomplished poets.

Posted by: defective robot | September 27, 2009 8:23 PM

"Christological?" Shouldn't it be "Christillogical?"

Posted by: Cyberguy | September 27, 2009 8:43 PM

@Alyson Miers (#74)

:-) Nice.

Saved to my atheism folder for future reference.

Posted by: Mr T | September 27, 2009 9:20 PM

Kel:

They think the Godmagic smoke will grant them eternal lifeget them high, so they cling to the non-answer because of that secondary desire.

You, sir, have already earned your Molly. You don't need to strut around being so hilariously incisive all the time. And smug, in a totally not-very-nice sort of way.

That goes for you too, Smoggy and Cuttlefish. If only I could write some atheist music in a comment that cleverly refuted Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring... Hmmm, would the retrograde inversion of the theme be too Bach-ish?

P.S.: With all this talk of magic smoke, I realized we haven't even addressed certain divinely-revealed truths concerning magic mirrors!

Posted by: StuStu | September 27, 2009 9:27 PM

Killer post.

I think the motivation behind writing a list of things that would make us seem nicer is something that the Christian can't freely admit. What he's really pleading for is sensitivity to the multitudes who've sunk their time, money, and emotional stability into they myth, who have built relationships and communities based on the myth, and who might be a bit more than reluctant to throw it all away, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

They can't freely admit this because it would be to admit that there is overwhelming evidence against their beliefs. And because they can't admit that, they deflect and complicate and plea for sensitivity. This last tactic, however, I don't fully reject. A little sensitivity is in order when dealing with the devout. It's tough hearing that everything you believe about the world is bullshit, even if it's clearly so. And deconversion is typically a long and difficult road.

Just as you said, the existence of God is only a "complex" issue because so many people believe it. Regarding the truth of the beliefs, that's absolutely the case. But on the other hand, regarding the lives of billions of believers and the debates about the role of religion in society, it absolutely is complex.

Posted by: Snoof | September 27, 2009 9:46 PM

but science does not have the proper tools to analyze, evidence or falsify the existence of any deity, whatsoever

That's an awfully strong statement. What makes deities different from, say, electrons, or mental illnesses, or unicorns, or pop music, or zebrafish, or money? Because science doesn't have any trouble with them.

Well, except maybe money. Economics is tricky.

Posted by: Kamaka | September 27, 2009 9:57 PM

Did I finally get in???

Damn typekey

Posted by: raven | September 27, 2009 10:07 PM

What is most stunning though, is the believers' being so paternalistic as to preach to us on our social manners..

Really. It would be good manners if the xian Death Cults would stop sponsoring Xian Terrorists with their bombings, arson, and assasinations. It is just tacky to gun down defenseless health care workers or plant bombs that wound dozens.

They could also stop trying to run our sex and family lives. I really don't need some brain dead xian kook telling me how many children to have, with who, how, and when. None of their damn business.

Posted by: DLC | September 27, 2009 10:11 PM

Stop being so smug = Code for "stop telling me I'm wrong, deluded and smarmily attempting to push my delusion on you"

Posted by: Liveliest Crib | September 27, 2009 10:19 PM

I wouldn't dare speak for my fellow atheists, so, I'll just answer the way I would had the advice been posed personally to me.

Stop being so smug.

Apologies for trespassing on the sole province of the religious. I realize you're the only ones allowed to be smug, as you mistake critical thinking for the surrender of common sense. I'm very sorry for the smugness. Really, I am. My bad. *Kisses* :)

Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Don't assume that my speaking sanity is always directed at you. I know sanity, logic and critical thinking can't reach you. You're immune. As I am immune to your fairy tales. But it's the undecideds I do worry about. I know you want the undecideds. I don't want you to victimize them, though.

Admit that the debate about God's existence is complex - and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

That otherwise rational people are superstitious has never been a problem for me to admit. There is ample evidence for it. Moreover, that it is possible to believe in an intervening deity depending on one's "presuppositions" is almost tautological. If you start with presuppositions that allow for a belief in god, you'll likely get there. Now, whether those presuppositions make any sense in the first place, well . . .

Admit that the scientific method - which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) - is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

Science is open to abuse? Yeah. Nothing to "admit." That it's not infallible? Duh. You guys claim to have discovered something infallible, not me. Not objective? No, you're idiots. You don't even know what deduction is.

Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God - and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by "Christians" - but understand how they're meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

In other words, you believe in the Bible, except the bad parts, which are really some kind of metaphor, and you decide the true meaning based on what you already believe. Sorry, but the actual notions of god(s) like that are as individual as the fools who claim to believe in them. It wouldn't matter how thorough my understanding of the Bible is, nor how much context I provided with my examples. For you, it means what you want it to mean at the moment.

Well, if nothing else, we're really getting to them. What's that old saying? First they ignore you; then they ridicule you; then they concern troll; then you win? ;)

Posted by: Caine | September 27, 2009 10:29 PM

Paraphrasing Terry Pratchett: "Religions are a parasitical lifeform, warping lives in the service only of the story itself."

There's nothing there which deserves respect or niceness.

Posted by: Kamaka | September 27, 2009 10:37 PM

Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you

And here we have the biggest lie in town...a true whopper from the lying liars who lie about lying

Posted by: Kamaka | September 27, 2009 10:47 PM

intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

Oh, good, I was hoping Gandalf was the real deal...

Posted by: Rorschach | September 27, 2009 10:55 PM

Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you

Just why is it that those people don't know the first thing about their own f'ing cult?

... we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

That's better.Admitting his cult is after the socially/mentally/intellectually weak is at least honest.

The fundies seriously believe in an inept, genocidal monster of a god.

I'm getting that realisation as well, mainly from reading J Sharlet's book on the "Family", scary shit.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 27, 2009 11:08 PM

Science is a form of idealism according to some philosophers, but really, it is the best working model on how to explain the natural world, but science does not have the proper tools to analyze, evidence or falsify the existence of any deity, whatsoever.

No, that's not quite true. It depends on the type of God being posited.

A God that was actually willing and able to interact with the natural world could provide a way for the tools of science to detect it, at least to a certain degree.

Most religions agree about the "able" being certain, but tend to confuse others and contradict themselves about the "willing".

Some say that God will never interact with the natural world. In that sense, God isn't willing.

Some say that that God will interact with the natural world, but not in a scientifically detectable way. That way they get to have their epistemic cake, and eat it too: The only way to "know" that God interacted with the natural world is through "faith". But that still assumes that God is not "willing" to interact with the natural world in a way that can be demonstrated to everyone; a scientifically falsifiable method.

And some say that everything that happens is the unfolding of God's will: The natural world results from God interacting with the world. This, though, assumes that God is not willing (or able) to demonstrate anything like a personality -- except, again, through "faith".

How does one distinguish faith from a childish imagination reinforced by confirmation bias? You don't, of course. You have to have "faith" in "faith".

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | September 27, 2009 11:29 PM

Ok, but please try to phrase your answers in limerick form.

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 27, 2009 11:32 PM

Argh. I get back from dinner and a walk, refresh the page over there, read all comments to the current one and finally go to post mine and the bandwidth runs out. Ten bucks says the little shit tries to claim, whenever he gets back up and running, that it was some act of atheist terrorism showing we're afraid of how he's exposed our vicious nature.

Posted by: Snoof | September 27, 2009 11:47 PM

mn-campbell, I'm trying to understand your point, and I'm not getting it. Are you suggesting that people should be nicer on the internet? Sure, why not, but it's hardly specific to atheist-theist arguments.

Also, remember the important of avoiding the ad hominem fallacy - just because someone's a jerk, it doesn't make them wrong. Similarly, just because someone's nice, it doesn't make them right.

Also, as for cultural context - seriously, what? I'm Australian too, and as far as I can tell, your arguments are just as weak on this side of the equator as they are in the north.

Posted by: Anri | September 27, 2009 11:51 PM

nm-campbell sez (in part):

I will try to respond to most of your friends who have commented when my site is resurrected, but until then I'm happy to stick around here and cop insults from your readers.

Really?
Pity, that, as I imagine that most of us here would rather you stick around here and attempt to answer some of the specific points raised in regards to the initial posting.

Oh, and also:

I'm sure you're all very nice people, unless of course you're talking to someone you disagree with.

Well, aside from the questionable net-etiquette of going on to someone else's blog and suggesting how the members should post, and the broad-brush painting that you seem to be willing to engage in here...
...but let's set that all aside and play your game.
In this conversation, what rules would you like us to play by in responding to you?

Please understand, I am making no promises that I or anyone else here will play by the rules you suggest, I'm just interested in what you'd consider the 'correct' way to converse with you.

Thanks in advance!

Posted by: echidna | September 27, 2009 11:54 PM

nm-campbell,
you would be surprised by just how many aussies are on this site. Don't imagine that we don't have the same culture wars here, it's just a little different. The Queenslanders have had issues with the creationists for a long time, and it's affecting our biology education in high schools (scant as it is), according to tertiary educators that I have spoken to.

Ken Ham did not arise out of a vacuum - he is part of a long standing movement.
I've spoken to religious people spouting anti-science creationist rubbish, blissfully unaware that they are arguing for a young earth and against all evidence, all because they accept any thing spoken from the pulpit without thinking critically about it.

That, for me, is the true danger of religion - that the pulpit gives an unwarranted authority to idiots who speak from it.

Posted by: ornwen | September 27, 2009 11:55 PM

this needed the most smug, hostile response possible, so i posted one on my blog:

http://what-t-f.blogspot.com/

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 28, 2009 12:03 AM

Aww, I guess I'm out ten bucks since he's smarter than I gave him credit for. So I apologize for the bit about betting he'd assume the bandwidth thing was a plot. However...

nm-campbell (#110)

I really, genuinely, believe that atheists can be nice people...

We are nice. Unless, of course, some oblivious twit pretends to scold us from what he thinks is some sort of moral high ground. Others have pointed out where you violate your own rules and when you get your site back up, I'll point out a few places in the comments where you violate your own suggestion number five about strawmen in particular. Or are you promoting double standards here where it's only atheists who have to follow your suggestions.

Even if we weren't slamming your inane suggestions, I'm sure you'd still find us smug, though, since what we consider nice is to challenge anyone espousing a belief without a solid foundation backing it up. We would want poor reasoning to be stomped out of us, so we figure it's quite right to stomp it out of anyone displaying it. I know I appreciate the people who have questioned my own stupid beliefs and weaned me away from them. They didn't tell me what to think, either, they just asked questions that showed me what I believed was impossible to defend. I also appreciate the people here who are so forthright in their criticism of foolish thinking.

I'm sure you're all very nice people, unless of course you're talking to someone you disagree with.

And if you really think you're treating us like you treat everyone you come across, then you're a smug little self-important fuck to all of them. Yay for you. While you're here, why don't you try being nice our way: quit patting yourself on the back for your false civility and give reality its due instead of making up quasi-post-modern excuses for magical thinking and shitty reasoning. If you want to convince an atheist of anything, the last thing you want to do is say, "Well, if you only agreed with me, then you'd see I'm right."

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 28, 2009 12:07 AM

Dear Brother nm-Campbell,

Good on you for coming here and baring yourself to the slings and arrows of atheist derision. As I am a Noo Zillunder you will have no expectation of any niceness from me, which means we can get straight down to slagging each other off.

First, and most importantly, don't try being nice to atheists. They are angry because they don't think it is fair that they are damned-to-hell-for-all-eternity on account of some half-assed deity who specializes in contradictions and has countless people believing that He somehow created the universe when He can't even make a simple garden without sticking a lethal tree in the middle of it.

Secondly, don't be a wet. Nobody likes a damp squib, or a limp penis. Tell it like it is: there's only one GOD (although he's split into three), and He loves us (even though he wipes out almost everybody who crosses him and let his son be crucified), AND he says we can only be happy in heterosexual marriage (even though he impregnated an unmarried under-age virgin and his son never married and liked to hang out with fisherman), AND he's given us the gifts of the Spirit (even though they only manifest as really weird shit like gibbering and lengthening short legs people didn't know they had), AND he's Omniscient (even though he's constantly surprised and angry when people don't do things he expected), AND His Holy Bible is His infallible word (even though no two Christians, Jews or any other people of the book can agree on what it says), AND he doesn't want us eating bacon, but it's OK to eat his own transubstantiated flesh (make mine a rib with dipping sauce).

Praise God and export the faith,

Smoggy Batzrubble
Missionary to the Atheists

PS I should point out that you Australians were responsible for sending Ken Ham to America, so you can hardly take the moral high ground in the culture wars.

Posted by: speedweasel | September 28, 2009 12:11 AM

I will try to respond to most of your friends who have commented when my site is resurrected, but until then I'm happy to stick around here and cop insults from your readers.

OK then, find a seat quickly as you can. Sit down and pay attention. You’re very late to class and you’ve obviously missed an awful lot of the curriculum, but it’s never too late to learn to see the world clearly, I guess.

I can’t say that you will be the first religidiot we’ve had through these halls but who knows, you may be the first to actually learn something. Of course that will depend entirely upon you and your capacity for reasoning and logic, which you’ve not impressed us with so far, but never mind. What matters is that we’re prepared to take you at face value and give you an opportunity.

Now, I can tell from the work you’ve submitted so far that you are struggling with your understanding of Science. That’s not as bad as it seems. Not everyone is cut out to be a scientist. It takes a level of intellect and honesty that isn’t much found among the religious. You’ve probably already spent years and suppressing the mental faculty required for honest inquiry but I’m sure it’s not your fault. Many of the (ahem) ‘less gifted’ students that we receive have been intellectually abused by their parent’s religious institution. It makes it very difficult for them to succeed here, but don’t worry about all that. You’re here now and that’s what matters.

So, feel free to ask questions if you need to, but please avoid phrasing them rhetorically, as if trying to make a point. You’ll get much more value out of your time here if you think through your argument before posting, rather than just heaping your baggage on the table and gesturing at it wildly. I won’t lie to you, it can be quite challenging. We had one little boy here some time ago that went quite off the rails. He came completely unhinged and moved to Canada. So sad... What was I talking about? Oh yes, so hear me when I say it can be tough!

OK, here come the other children. Quiet now, eyes towards the front and off we go. Good luck nm-campbell. We’ve provided the opportunity; the rest is up to you.

(Sorry, that was quite smug wasn’t it?)

Posted by: melior | September 28, 2009 12:16 AM

"1. Stop...
2. Don't...
3. Admit...
4. Admit...
5. Try..."

Unsolicited advice is like a fart in an elevator -- everyone feels the urge sometimes, but only a fool expects anyone else to be as proud of it as you are afterwards.

Posted by: Kel | September 28, 2009 12:26 AM

In #126, that should be point #4, not point #3. Apologies for the error.

Posted by: Moose | September 28, 2009 12:31 AM

PZ:

Been delaying this first post for a while-I just needed an appropriate item to comment on...

Bravo.

I can't agree more-

You start with:

"1. Stop being so smug.

Make me."

And end with:

"Oh, no — we didn't mean those millions of believers. They're stupid. We meant these other millions of believers." It's a big game of whack-a-mole."

Absolutely classic!

I've been following Pharyngula for a few months now. Thank you for providing me with evidence of the following:

1. Not every American is a fundie idiot (btw-I'm an expat, and left during The Shrub's years for that reason)
2. The growing body of evidence that Atheists are neither amoral or morally bankrupt (and seems to be opposite on the theist side…)
3. That I made the right decision in becoming atheist (h/t to Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins and and Christopher Hitchens) and never regreting it since.

Please consider yourself among those luminaries-thou art god(less).

Posted by: Moose | September 28, 2009 12:36 AM

#130:

"Now this is condescending shit, and one reason why atheists can be so antitheist. If you live in Australia, then chances are you interact with atheists on a daily basis - especially if you interact with people under 25."

Yup-coming from Perth, WA. Thanks for the validation!

Posted by: aratina cage | September 28, 2009 12:42 AM

Smuggy—I mean, Smoggy! So good to have you back behind us all again offering your immoral support. Far too often I forget how obsessed God was with sodomy, but you're always there to remind me, and vividly so. :D

And I do love me some Cuttlefish v. Smoggy poetic duels. You two ought to partner up (not that kind of partnering, Smoggy, I'm talking business here) and publish your collected Pharyngulal works together.

Posted by: nm-campbell | September 28, 2009 12:54 AM

So I have to switch hosts because of all the traffic. I knew lists about controversial stuff make for good blogging fodder.

It doesn't take much to get people online to fly off the handle so I'll try to choose my words carefully...

To all the Australians here flying off the handle because of my little comment about me being Australian and that making things different - consider for a moment that I wasn't addressing you but perhaps the myriad commenters who have made the assumption that I'm from the States. To be honest, I wasn't considering the global ramifications of my post - I was writing it with the intention of having a pingback from the original conversation on the other post.

The fact that it led to all this venom from people I don't know is quite astounding.

I'd address points made by all of you if they weren't so voluminous, and so often making inferences that were not intended.

I'll start by saying I've got no problem with science - I just don't think it's an argumentative Holy Grail. It's a movable feast. If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

The cloud of smug arising from responses here is incredibly similar to the type you experience when talking to people who drive hybrid cars...

The idea that the debate is complex and that it's people who haven't made up their minds is not meant to be sinister or an attack on those of you who have made up your minds. I'm quite an intelligent guy (apparently) and I understand the atheist perspective on things, I just chose to reject it based on my personal interpretation of the facts. Many people will do the same thing. The fact that you've all made up your mind is great. The fact that you've rejected God and maintained a moral compass is also wonderful.

I just think you're wrong. I don't think we need to agree on this matter, I think we can just be a little more civil in our discussions - yes, Christians have a problem with this too, but again, had you been in a position to read more than just this post from my blog you'd know that I'm pretty big on that.

I'm not being a sell out, I just think we can have a disagreement about the existence of God and do it without resorting to emotive language and petty name calling.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 28, 2009 1:13 AM

You know, I don't equate faith necessarily with delusion.

Neither do I. I was specifically referring to religious faith.

There is a great discussion of Richard Dawkins and George Coyne on Youtube, and I wouldn't for a second think that George Coyne was being fooled.

I haven't seen that one, but I do still have to ask: How would you know that he wasn't being fooled?

How would he himself know?

The basic idea of his is that the God of faith is not an explanatory God,twisting the knobs of the universe, but a revealing God.

That sounds like the second scenario I posited, I think ("God will interact with the natural world, but not in a scientifically detectable way.").

If it doesn't match, then how is it different?

There are other faithful people I think who are very admirable people.

That's not what's being argued against, here. My point was not personal character, per se, just with how their minds work when analyzing their own epistomologies -- there's a double standard; a failure to doubt how religious faith itself "works".

You -- and they -- might bridle at "childish imagination reinforced by confirmation bias", yet how does that differ from "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it" ? Only in tone; childlike innocence and acceptance is "good"; childish ignorance and gullibility is "bad".

But they're really the same thing. Adults just want children to be innocently accepting when the adults are talking to them; they want them not to be ignorant and gullible when someone is trying to tell them something the adults think the children should not believe.

But there is a lot of theological writing that is in competent hands,

I've become far too familiar with theological writing of late, not in the sense of being particularly learned, but in the sense of seeing how hollow and based on pathetic fallacies the arguments are, every one.

As PhysicistDave asked, what exactly do you have in mind?

Posted by: frankosaurus | September 28, 2009 1:18 AM

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

Nope, cuz if we do find evidence of God (growing dimmer by the second), it'll be because we found it, not because a book told us so or we were trying to confirm a 5000 year-old hypothesis.

You have to understand atheism isn't a product of evolution. Evolution discredits the Bible (in a big way). It just so happens that everything about theism is discredited. So voila, atheism (which in my mind is also a useful descriptor for a person with a highly attuned bullshit detector. And you know what? It started to tingle the second I started reading your post)

Posted by: Snoof | September 28, 2009 1:27 AM

No, campbell. "Petty name-calling" would be calling you things like "intellectual midget" and "Christofascist theocrat" and "Queenslander". It may astonish you, but at Pharyngula, in between the bile and bacon, we actually address _arguments_ (sometimes). As of yet, you've failed to defend any of the points you're making, preferring to throw up more verbiage without actually saying anything substantial. You say that you "chose to reject [the atheist position] based on [your] personal interpretation of the facts", but you're not stating what your interpretation is, nor the facts you're interpreting, nor indeed why your interpretation should be considered valid.

Also, "flying off the handle"? No, flying off the handle would be screaming "GET THE FUCK OUT MY COUNTRY YOU BIGOTED FUCKWAD". As it is, a couple of people have pointed out that they, too, are Australian, and still disagree with you, despite sharing the same "context".

Seriously, you think this thread is full of venom? It's downright polite. I've seen more vicious arguments on Star Trek fora.

Also:

The fact that you've rejected God and maintained a moral compass is also wonderful.

See, stuff like that? That's why some members are reacting negatively. It's patronising and, frankly, insulting.

Posted by: Richard H. | September 28, 2009 1:32 AM

Christian replies are often pretty frustrating to read.

They seem to start with a series of posts about how they're ready to accept criticism/abuse. And somehow, the conversation never gets back to the substance of the dispute.

At best, the "I'm ready for you to attack me!" comments are white noise. We know that people are ready to have their points critiqued. Otherwise they wouldn't be posting them here

Other times, it seems like a self-indulgent fantasy. Accepting criticism on the internet != suffering for one's faith.

Posted by: speedweasel | September 28, 2009 1:36 AM

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

Congratulations. In one sentence you have betrayed your complete ignorance of science. Are you just assuming that science operates the same way as religion? It doesn’t! We don’t have dogma. We try not to view the world through a lens of prejudice. We don’t have our knowledge handed down from authority or through revelation. We don’t know things with certainty and we aren’t operating on faith.

We have ideas and experiments and evidence moving in a perpetual cycle towards knowledge.

So one day we might find evidence for god? Cool. There *was* no evidence to believe in god, so I didn’t. When there *is* I will. I have no problem making my life’s decisions based on scientific evidence. Where’s the egg?

Anyway, if scientists did find evidence for the christian god, you wouldn’t seem as clever as you think. You’d seem an awful lot like the kid at school that just guessed the answers to the test. So what if you guessed right? It was still a guess. You could parrot the answer but you couldn’t show your work.

I thought I was being a bit rough with my last post about how you’ve obviously come late to the class and missed a lot of the curriculum, but damn. I was right on wasn’t I? You’re obviously a long way out of your depth here.

Cue christian rebuttal based on the misunderstanding of what constitutes evidence in 3, 2, 1…

Posted by: Lily | September 28, 2009 1:50 AM

"If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces. "

That's definitely true, if in a hundred years we find evidence that the christian God exists. What if we find incontrovertible evidence that it doesn't exist? Will the Christians have egg on their faces?

How about we find incontrovertible evidence that 'strings', as in string theory, don't exist? What do you think science will do? In general, I imagine there to be a lot of excitement, because the evidence that could disprove string theory would just lead to a closer and more accurate truth and potential insight into the construction of our universe.

Science isn't without it's own in-fights, but when has differing beliefs in the interpretation of scientific claims caused a homicidal inquisition, holy war or crusade? People kill en masse over differing interpretations of the same deities because of faith. Faith is the acceptance of one's own inability to understand truth, and when faith is mistaken for that truth, ignorant beliefs get far more credibility than they have earned.

In science, faith has to be earned by empirical evidence. I have faith that gravity exists because I can see things falling toward the ground when I drop them and in the context of everything else I've learned, I can make sense of it all.

I can't make sense of an ancient book that's been translated and adulterated by numerous political figures over thousands of years having any more relevance in the modern day than the numerous other gospels that were ignored by Constantine or whatever male-dominated council collected the scraps of the Bible.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 28, 2009 1:57 AM

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

1)Which version? There's some 38000 Christian denominations with divergent interpretations of what/who precisely this "Christian God" is; and within those denominations, I'm sure there's as many personal interpretations as there are people. And if one of those "Christian God"s proves to be the real deal... then 37999 denominations and millions of Christians will have gotten it wrong. are you sure you're the lucky one who got it right? Or, maybe it was the Albigensians who had it right, so no christian worships the right "Christian God". You'll so have egg on your face when THAT comes out!

2)Science has already disproven a whole bunch of the "Christian God"s, most notably the fundie literalist flavors. By now, most of the OT is well-established as pure fiction, and scientific work on the NT is heading in the same direction. And generally, science doesn't revisit theories already thoroughly disproven. Or do you see much Lamarckism around anymore? Anyway, any deity that can still be discovered in the gaps of human knowledge will no longer have much to do with the "Christian god" in the bible, literal or otherwise. But hey, maybe it will be Spong's god; he's still sorta kinda christian, right?

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | September 28, 2009 2:18 AM

The fact that it led to all this venom from people I don't know is quite astounding.

You asserted that people who lack belief in your god (and everyone else's gods for that matter) are smug for nothing more than point outing the fact that such a position is the only one which is intellectually sound; you should have expected it.

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

Considering that nearly every one of your contemporary siblings-in-faith spend much of their time demanding that scientists accept that the Christian god is 'outside of science' that's probably going to be more of the problem for them than it is for us - particularly since most (if not all) atheists are lacking belief because there is no evidence for the existence of gods rather than because they dislike the idea.

Heck, I'd love the universe to be fair; that good people would be rewarded (as illogical as the concept of heaven is) and bad people punished (ditto hell) - who doesn't? But that doesn't mean that it's going to happen.

And, while we're on it, what happens if science proves that the Hindu pantheon of gods exists? How fast will you be switching your allegiance from Jesus to Ganesh?

The cloud of smug arising from responses here is incredibly similar to the type you experience when talking to people who drive hybrid cars...

Next time you cite South Park, have the decency - and intellectual honesty - to reference your quote.

I'm quite an intelligent guy (apparently) and I understand the atheist perspective on things, I just chose to reject it based on my personal interpretation of the facts.

No, you don't. You choose to reject it because of your emotional attachment to the beliefs you hold. There is only one interpretation of 'the facts'; that is that the Christian god does not exist. Feel free to believe what you want to believe - just don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you try to rationalise it.

The fact that you've rejected God and maintained a moral compass is also wonderful.

I've only 'rejected' your god in the same sense that you've 'rejected' Zeus, or Athena and Quetzlcoatl. I see no reason to believe such a being exists; that is not the same as believing in and rejecting a being that does exist.

I just think we can have a disagreement about the existence of God and do it without resorting to emotive language and petty name calling.

Fine by me - like you, I'm Australian and I've not had to put up with as much interference to my government and culture; and as much damage done to my society, education system and scientific industry as our friends in the USA have. Your people have been making many of them very unhappy - murdering them, limiting their civil rights, ruining their children's educations etc. - for a long time; don't be too surprised if they express their resentment toward you.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 28, 2009 2:26 AM

nm-campbell,

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God the Greek gods it's you guys
Christians who'll have egg on your their faces.

Just as valid.

Why do you think Christianity is right*, but Judaism, Islam, Norse Mythology, Australian Aboriginal mythology, etc. isn't?

Also, do you take issue with civility in political debates or political satire, which (from my experience) are generally much harsher than criticisms of religion? Or how about civility during academic debates? Should your religion, or religion in general, be exempt from derision?

* Ignoring for the moment that there are literally tens of thousands of sects of Christianity.

Posted by: speedweasel | September 28, 2009 2:39 AM

New business proposition:

1. Run a religious website with ill-informed posts on topics that I am completely ignorant about, but mainly criticize ‘athiesm’
2. Run as many Google ads as humanly possible
3. Ignite the ire of PZ and many other skeptical/atheist bloggers
4. Fan the flames in my threads by endlessly repeating the same old, inane arguments
5. Profit

Posted by: Jason A. | September 28, 2009 2:44 AM

Still #139:

The fact that you've rejected God and maintained a moral compass is also wonderful.

Gee thanks. The fact that you've rejected critical thinking and maintain the ability to spell and write in complete sentences is wonderful.
You don't get to complain that we're too mean while simultaneously making veiled insults like this. Or is it possible you didn't realize this was condescending? In that case, maybe your supposed 'quite intelligent' understanding of the atheist perspective isn't as complete as you imagine.

Campbell CliffsNotes: Complain about 'tone' and 'civility' when you can't defend your position.

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 28, 2009 3:56 AM

nm-campbell (#139)

I'd address points made by all of you if they weren't so voluminous, and so often making inferences that were not intended.

Are we meant to infer that you know what we're thinking such that you know which of our inferences are intended and which aren't?

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

No we wouldn't. Apparently you're confused about what atheists actually claim. Either we don't think there is evidence for your god and thus wouldn't be ashamed in the least if evidence turned up in the future, or we think your god is logically impossible and thus any evidence that showed up would be for some other, logically possible god that only superficially resembled yours and we still wouldn't have anything to be ashamed over. By the way, are we supposed to infer from this that you think no evidence that's been found so far? I thought you said there was evidence.

The cloud of smug arising from responses here is incredibly similar to the type you experience when talking to people who drive hybrid cars...

Are we meant to infer that you're an AGW denialist, too?

I'm quite an intelligent guy (apparently) and I understand the atheist perspective on things, I just chose to reject it based on my personal interpretation of the facts.

The fuck you do. What's our position, eh? Spell it out.

I don't think we need to agree on this matter, I think we can just be a little more civil in our discussions...

I understand the theist perspective on civility, I just chose to reject it based on my personal interpretation of the meaning of the word.

~*~*~*~*~

speedweasel (#149)

Anyway, if scientists did find evidence for the christian god, you wouldn’t seem as clever as you think. You’d seem an awful lot like the kid at school that just guessed the answers to the test. So what if you guessed right? It was still a guess. You could parrot the answer but you couldn’t show your work.

Fucking brilliant. No, really!

~*~*~*~*~

Jason A. (#161)

Gee thanks. The fact that you've rejected critical thinking and maintain the ability to spell and write in complete sentences is wonderful.

You almost made me pee myself lauging.

Posted by: bastion of sass | September 28, 2009 4:08 AM

In a previous post I wrote:

"Seems to me that if God gets the blame for your father getting better, he also gets the credit for causing his very serious stroke in the first place."

Of course that should have been:

"Seems to me that if God gets the credit for your father getting better, he also gets the blame for causing his very serious stroke in the first place.

Note to self: Re-preview after every edit.

Posted by: mangobingo | September 28, 2009 4:41 AM

2. Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

OK...

3. Admit that the debate about God's existence is complex - and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

In that case, why all the evangelism? It's almost as if you're not admitting that the debate about God's existence is complex, or something...

Posted by: SEF | September 28, 2009 5:06 AM

@ gyeong-hwa #140:

... we tackle it with equal furry.

I'm surprised no-one else (including the original poster) found that typo amusing enough to point out.

What if all issues and problems were tackled with (equal) furries? Small difficulties might be fixed with a gerbil or guinea-pig. But for a really big dilemma, there's no hope but to throw a whopping great furry at it - eg perhaps a polar bear. Maybe that's why the world has run out of mammoths. They were all used up tackling the ginormous quandaries still around in pre-history. Nowadays, the remaining tiny glitches can largely be handled by the natural fuzziness of subatomic particles.

Posted by: nm-campbell | September 28, 2009 6:29 AM

@159 - I don't run any ads, nor referral programs, nor was I intending to gain attention from PZ Meyers - it's actually come at a cost to me because the spike in traffic means I've had to change to a more robust host.

Posted by: nm-campbell | September 28, 2009 7:06 AM

Ok, I'm going to start from the top, and address PZ's post. Lets see how I go dealing with the rest of you...

"It's gone awry even with the title. I especially appreciate the word "seem," because Lord knows there's nothing that could make us actually nice, and obviously we need the suggestions of a Christian, since we're all such not-nice people."

Or alternatively, given that I often write about Public Relations, as that is my profession, I may have been actually offering you some advice about how to "seem" nicer.

Atheists, in my humble opinion, have a branding issue. I know many nice atheists. But this response from a crowd of vitriol spewing sycophants to someone you've never met from across the other side of the planet writing on a personal blog (read hobby horse) is a case in point for my suggestion.

"I should make a counter-list of "five things that would make Christians seem intelligent" — maybe then one of them would notice the nasty implications of this clown's title."

Something like that would have been my next post, had my blog not died. Particularly after the response I got from your readers.

"But I'm the wrong guy to do it. You see, I'm not nice, and proud of it. I have no interest in being nice, and I think it's rather pathetic to start an argument by baring your throat to my teeth and begging for mercy before you've even started."

I can't say I was out to start an argument. I'm happy to continue it though. I enjoy it. I can't really follow your analogy - you seem to have imputed an intention to me that wasn't mine in order to insult me. Oh well. Next point...

"Look, you start an argument, you don't get to whine at your opponent to be humble about his ideas before you've even taken a stab at criticizing them."

I didn't start an argument - I put forward a series of suggestions that might make life better for all of us.

"Show me a reason not to be smug about atheism, and reason, and science, and the superiority of our beliefs over that pile of superstitious dogma you call faith."

Well, when you put it that way...

There's not much I can say here to you - you've already made up your mind. But smugness helps nobody, except perhaps for the feeling of superiority it gives you...

But really, while acknowledging that history suffers from the same issues of objectivity as science, I think Christianity hinges on the historicity of Jesus. If you can convince me that he didn't exist then we'll talk.

"Christians also don't get to play the humility card, anyway. People who believe they have privileged access to mysterious information direct from the brain of a cosmos-spanning super-intelligence, and who believe everyone else is damned to eternal torment, aren't exactly poster-children for modesty."

Sure, except the Bible calls Christians to be humble (to consider others better than oneself). If Christians are doing that properly then it is a credit to Christianity, this is a failing of much of the broader church, and probably, from what I understand, the American church.

"Oh, my, no. You think we see the inane dreck Christians propose as an argument, and you think we assume it's directed at us?"

No, I assumed the atheist commenting on the blog I was responding to (and linked to) was assuming a particular campaign was targeting atheists.

"We're "smug," remember — we figure there's no way you can really be so stupid as to think we're going to be swayed by Pascal's Wager or handwaving at vague quotes from the Bible or threats of an imaginary Hell or promises of an imaginary paradise."

No, these things are only persuasive if you think they're true and of value. Which Christians do. Again, I'm not sure what your issue is here. There are plenty of people who are "spiritual" but not Christian, plenty of theists, plenty of people sold on the concept of God but not set on one - I'd suggest these are the people who consider such supernatural things as possible.

"We're after the undecideds, too. We love tearing up your stupidity in public for that reason."

Yes, I understand. Which is why I am suggesting some sort of Queensbury Rules for our battle for the conquest of the great unwashed.

"For instance, I know that the Christian who wrote this list wasn't directing it at me, and probably never even heard of me. That doesn't stop me from pissing on it."

I'd heard of you. I read occasionally. I have no idea how you heard of me...

"There is a simplicity at the core that is not in Christian interests to expose: is there a god or gods, and is there any reasonable evidence for him, it, her, or them? And further, is there a reason to believe in your specific god over Thor or Xenu or Moroni or whatever other fiction some cunning con artist chose to peddle to the gullible?"

Explore away. Again, I think the issue is the historicity of Jesus and the accuracy of reports about his life. I think your pantheon of other potential Gods are worthy of consideration, but I have rejected them...

"And your 'intervening deity' (the existence of which is an assertion not supported by any evidence) 'communicates' (you are using that word in some strange fashion that is not reasonable) 'through a book' (that was cobbled together from scattered scraps of theological rants, old poetry, and self-serving pseudo-history over 1500 years ago)? That's crazy talk right there."

Like I've said in the comments on my post - there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for God's intervention. Most Christians would give up the ghost if there was no compelling continuing reason to keep them (outside of "brainwashing" and "cultural imperatives" that you'll no doubt throw my way).

"Science uses both inductive and deductive logic. Induction is the idea generator, the process that spins out tentative hypotheses that can be evaluated by observation, experiment, and deductive logic."

I agree, science is great. And really helpful.

"Science is not infallible, and no one ever claims that it is..."

Some of your rabid commenters come pretty close.

"but it has something that religion lacks: a process of testing claims against real-world observations."

This is just not true, all my observations of the real world lend me to believe in sin, evil and brokenness as described and explained in that primitive book you pointed to.

"To claim that science is as open to abuse as religion is ignorant nonsense."

I give you three concrete examples to the contrary - Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science... is it not possible that people with agendas against religion are harnessing the compelling and convincing nature of science to tear down the notion of God?

I'll finish the rest soon... my site is back up, I'll approve any comments held for moderation in an hour or so (except some that may have been lost in the transition).

Posted by: speedweasel | September 28, 2009 7:18 AM

I'll start by saying I've got no problem with science - I just don't think it's an argumentative Holy Grail.

Ah yes, I missed this first time around. The appeal to ‘other ways of knowing’. I’ve got no problem accepting a low standard of evidence if you, say, tell me that you’re in love or that you think Radiohead are the best band you’ve ever heard. You know, subjective stuff that doesn’t have a bearing on the world.

But as soon as you start making positive claims for the existence of god, sasquatch, aliens, the effectiveness of homeopathy or claim that the holocaust never happened, the required standard of evidence goes way up and you dont just get to insist that god is an exception to this rule without making a pretty damn convincing argument.

Posted by: Wayne Robinson | September 28, 2009 7:24 AM

"If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces".
Just a thought, what would be adequate scientific evidence for the Christian god? I can't think of anything.
Richard Dawkins reckoned it would be finding something absolutely scientific and true in the bible which could not have possibly been known to the writers of the text (eliminated already).
If Jesus appeared tomorrow, I'd still be suspecting extraterrestrial intelligence with advanced science/gene technology, who are attempting to take over the world by pretence (I don't think that's likely).
Possibly the invention of a time machine, and we go back and film the crucifixion and resurrection? Also unlikely.
The Big Bang? The Christian god being the cause? That argument really irritates me, if only because it reminds me of Dinesh D'Souza. Which reminds me, Bart Ehrman is debating him on October 7 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I wish I could be there. I hope it's put online. No, on second thoughts, I can't stand the thought of D'Souza's shouting when he doesn't have any strong arguments to make.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 28, 2009 7:31 AM

I give you three concrete examples to the contrary - Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science - nm-campbell

No, they really, really, don't. Not even a little bit. You need to distinguish between claiming to use science, and actually doing so. In none of the cases you refer to is there any attempt at an honest assessment of the currently available evidence, and of theories that purport to explain it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 28, 2009 7:41 AM

Like I've said in the comments on my post - there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for God's intervention.

No, there is no physical evidence. You are deluding yourself that anything of substance is there.

Again, I think the issue is the historicity of Jesus and the accuracy of reports about his life.

Nothing put to paper during his lifetime, no corroborating evidence from other sources. Nothing but fiction.

Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science..

No, wrong again. They all misuse science. They sound sciency, but no real science is presented. Real science is found in the peer reviewed literature, which these places and authors therein avoid like the plague for some strange reason. You need to learn how science really works.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | September 28, 2009 8:02 AM

And, you claim to work in PR? Like, you are supposed to be able to communicate with people?

Actually, I suspect that, like many people in PR, his real 'skill' is convincing people that he knows what he's talking about when in reality he hasn't the faintest idea. Pretty much everything he's written here so far indicates he knows absolutely nothing about what atheism actually is - which is kind of funny; all he has to do is stop and think about why it is he doesn't believe in Vishnu and Ganesh and Thor and Zeus and Loki and Marduk etc. and expand that to include Yahweh and Jesus.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 28, 2009 8:11 AM

You need to distinguish between claiming to use science, and actually doing so.

And, more importantly, understand the main point:
it is possible to distinguish between science and pseudoscience ["abuse of science"].
it is not possible to distinguish between religion and pseudoreligion [which is why there is no such word].

Posted by: IaMoL | September 28, 2009 8:41 AM

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

Pascal's Alarm Clock.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 28, 2009 8:53 AM

I give you three concrete examples to the contrary - Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science... is it not possible that people with agendas against religion are harnessing the compelling and convincing nature of science to tear down the notion of God?

are you sure you're not a comedian?

Posted by: adhesiveslipper | September 28, 2009 8:59 AM

nm-campbell/St. Eutychus:

I'm not going to "fly off the handle" and chew your post apart. I'm not going to call you names. Enough people (including the OP) have done that. I've also already had the task of debunking your "When my god shows up in 100 years you'll all be sorry!" comment neatly handled for me.

However, the part of your argument that I take the most issue with - and I don't feel that it's been adequately addressed here yet - is your concept of what Christianity SHOULD be.

You imply that Christians SHOULD be humble. In fact, you have multiple posts on your blog - and now here in this comment thread as well - expounding upon how you, personally, feel that Christians SHOULD behave, "market themselves", etc.

It's all well and good to dictate what your religion SHOULD be... but that doesn't change the reality. Your gentle, humble Christians don't seem to show their faces very often. It's telling of your own hubris... possibly even a hint of smugness... that you feel you're enlightened enough to declare what the "right" sort of Christianity is... let alone to tell how us atheists how we ought to behave.

Posted by: echidna | September 28, 2009 9:01 AM

nm-cambell,

So far, you look like a flaming galah, flapping about and making noise but not doing anything useful.

You need to provide examples and evidence for the things you claim. So far, you've only been screeching. Oh, and it helps if the examples that you do use actually support your argument - AIG is not remotely scientific.

If you are a PR guy, you know that different audiences respond to different tactics. The readers of this blog will not be swayed by empty rhetoric, no matter how skilled, but will be convinced by evidence-backed reasoning. The key word here is evidence.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 9:11 AM

This is great, PZ! I agree with you right down the line.

As a Christian naturalist (no otherworldly beliefs yet value the mythic language), my hope is that you and the other New Atheists will continue to be as ruthless and direct (and nasty) as you wish to be. Christian "super"naturalists will need to be beaten upside the head for the next few decades, it seems to me, and y'all are the perfect ones to do it. Keep up the great work!

Co-evolutionarily,

~ Michael

Posted by: raven | September 28, 2009 9:19 AM

Atheists, in my humble opinion, have a branding issue

Xians do too. In this country, the majority of the population, mostly other xians are sick and tired of the fundie perversion. This isn't a "humble opinion", it is a fact shown by polling data.

Between 1 and 2 million people abandon the religion every year in the USA. That isn't a branding issue either, it is the religion declining as people get fed up and smart and leave.

When xian became synonymous with Liar, Hater, Ignorant, Crazy, and Killer, people didn't want to be one anymore. That not branding, that is just common sense.

Being lying, crazy, evil, violent and xian isn't branding, it is pathetic and counterproductive..

This Campbell guy who claims to be intelligent isn't even smart enough to make good troll kicking material. Mostly he just hurls insults couched in "nice" language while making up what few facts he presents and getting them wrong. Need to get some air in the ball, it is way too soft and mushy.

We already know how it ends. Xians backed into corners spout some bible verses like they are cruise missiles, tell everyone they are going to hell, and then threaten to kill people. Routine.

Since Nathan is in PR, I'm sure he will make it sound nice, smug, and condescending. "Sorry old chaps and ladies, but the bible says we can't let you heathens live. Just climb on that stack of fire wood while we tie you up, if you please. And don't worry, it will be over in a jiffy and we will make sure someone feeds your cat."

Posted by: nm-campbell | September 28, 2009 9:25 AM

I'm only going to pick the interesting or particularly annoying people to respond to. There are just too many of you.

Firstly, to all of you who have tried commenting on my original post, go for it. I'll approve your comments. Part of my anti-spam system involves me having to approve first time commenters. I'm certainly not trying to censor the discussion.

Now, to this particular comment...

" Why would I have egg on my face? Seems to me that god would have the responsibility for my non-belief for waiting so long to provide any evidence that he existed. I mean, he's the guy in charge, right?"

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

"What could possibly sway you to abandon your faith in Christianity? Or in a god?"

I think, given that I have investigated and rejected all other religious claims (as far as I know), it would take demonstrable evidence that the Bible is fraudulent, that the prophecies of Messiah fulfilled in Jesus were as non-specific as some maintain, and that Jesus himself did not say the stuff he said.

I'm not interested in reading atheist rebuttals of these points - I want peer reviewed, objective, historical studies.

"Crowd of vitriol spewing sycophants." And you think atheists need to seem nicer? BTW, Mr. Public Relations, great way to win over your audience."

None of you were my original audience. I understand that this is how the Internet works, and it has been a thoroughly enjoyable ride, but I had no intention when I wrote the post, as I've said over and over again, of being featured here. I would have taken much greater care when writing the post than I did had I known I'd get more than 4,000 hits.

"Would you point to the comments you feel are "vitriol spewing," because to me, this thread looks rather mild, nice and polite, especially for Pharyngula."

I don't read the comments here often, just the posts, so I can't comment on the nature of normal discussions.

But how bout this one:

"Fuck you and your Christian "Harry Potter" god. You'll most likely be dead by then and so will we. "

"You weren't expecting an argument? Rather you were expecting what, exactly? That an atheist would say, "By golly, he's right on all of these points!"

The average post on my blog gets about 100 reader and 4 comments... I was probably expecting something like that, and an email discussion with a couple of atheist friends of mine, and a pingback from the blog where an atheist smuggly offered their opinion in what I thought was an inappropriate way in an inappropriate forum.

"And you're doing one swell job of demonstrating humility so far. [that was sarcasm in case you think otherwise.]"

It's tough to be humble when you're copping this sort of barrage of hate. It's been specific rather than general and much of the criticism has been unfounded and misled.

"And so far, you've provided no evidence that god intervenes in our lives, circumstantial or otherwise. Tell us what this evidence is that you find so compelling."

Talk to most Christians and they'll say they have experienced answered prayers, become more Christlike as a result of "God's work in them", and become more, not less, convinced of the truth of their beliefs... this is the kind of circumstantial evidence I'd be talking about...

Also, on a personal note, I continue to be amazed at the complexity of the Bible and the way different parts from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking, particularly because the people faking it were clearly either delusional or telling the truth - they certainly don't seem to have been in it for themselves...

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 28, 2009 9:33 AM

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 9:40 AM

What follows is mostly for Christians and other religious people involved in this discussion.

IMHO, theism and atheism are outdated, misleading, and unnecessarily divisive concepts. Both came into being long before we discovered how the world, in fact, came into being -- through a billions year natural process of evolutionary emergence. The theist-atheist debate also predates our ability to appreciate the fact that ALL God language points to what is subjectively real and is trivialized when it is claimed to point to objective reality.

Those who claim that their religious stories or experiences are primarily about objective reality rather than subjective reality are either confused, deluded, deceived, or outright lying. (For the atheists in this discussion: It would be good to find out which and doing so in a compassionate way is probably going to produce the best results.)

The theist-atheist debate is ultimately a dead-ender but certainly necessary in the short run. It’ll last for a few more decades but then it will be history. Given how entrenched traditional theistic language is around the world, however, of course we are witnessing a push-back at this time! The New Atheists are playing an indispensable role. Those of us who are uncomfortable with the push-back can take comfort in seeing what lies ahead.

For example, I’m neither a theist, nor an atheist; I’m a transtheist, an emergentist, an evidentialist -- which is another way of saying that I’m religious naturalist. In my book "Thank God for Evolution," I refer to this perspective as creatheism (pronounced cree-a-theism or cree-atheism, however you prefer. Same concept, two playful pronunciations.)

Rock on, PZ!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 28, 2009 9:41 AM

Why did I know that Mr. Dowd's post was going to end up being a commercial?

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 28, 2009 9:45 AM

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

Amazing how the evidence he provided is indistinguishable from made-up stories. Kind of short-sighted for an omniscient being. How did he expect people living millenia later to verify that evidence?

demonstrable evidence that the Bible is fraudulent,

Did you read Gen. 1-2?

Or this bit:

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)

that the prophecies of Messiah fulfilled in Jesus were as non-specific as some maintain, and that Jesus himself did not say the stuff he said.

Shorter you: the Bible is true because it is the word of God! Says so right in the Bible!

Talk to most Christians and they'll say they have experienced answered prayers confirmation bias , become more Christlike as a result of "God's work in them" self-persuasion , and become more, not less, convinced of the truth of their beliefs full of epistemic vanity ... this is the kind of circumstantial anecdotal evidence I'd be talking about...

Fixed.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 28, 2009 9:58 AM

The theist-atheist debate also predates our ability to appreciate the fact that ALL God language points to what is subjectively real and is trivialized when it is claimed to point to objective reality.

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2007/07/20/crude/

Any other J&M fans in the house?

I’m a transtheist, an emergentist, an evidentialist -- which is another way of saying that I’m religious naturalist.

As a self-proclaimedconfessed dunce, I can't help but wonder what does "religious naturalist" mean. Is is a religiosity that isn't grounded in any supernatural allegations? Is it an awe of nature folded together with the belief in some abstract supernatural aspect?

Posted by: Rey Fox | September 28, 2009 10:09 AM

"The cloud of smug arising from responses here is incredibly similar to the type you experience when talking to people who drive hybrid cars."

Oh for crying out loud, here we go with the hybrid cars. Do you really think it helps make your point to sneer at people who want to reduce their carbon footprints? I think this gives the proper perspective on what you consider to be "smug", and that it is completely worthless. Atheists and hybrid car owners can just go on striving for rationality and intellectual honesty and using up less nonrenewable resources and contributing less pollution to the air, and you can go on sitting in the gutter and sniping at them.

Posted by: Drosera | September 28, 2009 10:15 AM

nm-campbell

Also, on a personal note, I continue to be amazed at the complexity of the Bible and the way different parts from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking, particularly because the people faking it were clearly either delusional or telling the truth - they certainly don't seem to have been in it for themselves...

If you consider that the Bible was written over a period of at least five centuries, it is not hard to see how selection and editing could have produced this complexity. For example, it would have been very easy for the authors of the New Testament to write something that seems to fulfill a prophecy (the coming of the messiah) that had been around for centuries. People who claim to be ’amazed’ by this are just stupid or pathologically gullible.

Posted by: Insightful Ape | September 28, 2009 10:21 AM

Hey Campbell the concern troll, I guess if in a hundred years we discover that Islam is the one true religion you will be the one with egg on your face right?
Except that it won't be egg. It will be boiling water in hell. You may want to read the Koran, the Koranic description of hell is even more graphic and revolting than in the so called book of revelations.
See, when someone comes up with unsolicited advice for me I find that patronizing as hell. Now that coming from someone who calls others smug is pretty amazing.
Your advice may make life easier for you but it certainly won't make it any easier for me.
While I'm not the biggest fan of Ronald Regan I think a quote from him is relevant for this discussion.
"We don't really care if we are liked or not. We want to be respected".
See, I don't give a damn if you like me and others like me. Which is why I'm no so keen on getting advice from you.
And, sorry to break this to you, respect is a two way street. And you'll get none as long as you threaten those who do not agree with you with eternal hellfire.

Posted by: IaMoL | September 28, 2009 10:22 AM

Or, perhaps it's that there is one of me and a hundred or more of you...

I've never heard the reverse of the bandwagon fallacy used so pathetically before. It sucks to be you. This isn't hate, btw, this is general annoyance at your pig-headed ignorance and grandiose delusions - you're not really significant enough to merit hate.

Posted by: RamblinDude | September 28, 2009 11:19 AM

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

Rational people who don’t believe in gods nailed him to a tree?

This is the reason you’re not very intelligent.

Posted by: Mr T | September 28, 2009 11:25 AM

gadow, I respectfully disagree. Michael Dowd's concepts of religious naturalism, transtheism, emergentalism, evidentialism, creatheism, etc., seem more like what I would consider "disingenuous golden-mean semanticism". Perhaps it's like some kind of "theologically-engaged atheism resembles disappointed belief", but really who the fuck actually understands a what he's talking about? I'm glad he's a naturalist: that's just fantastic. However, do you seriously find value in the Christian mythos, or that of other religions? That is absurd, and sort of scary.

As for you, nm-campbell: Please explain how your complex and allegedly-rational beliefs fit into Biblical "context and the broader Christological narrative". I'm certainly not expecting some grand theological treatise, but so far you've only provided us with a bunch of assertions, non sequiturs and ignorance.

Also, I'm glad to see you're still trotting out Answers in Genesis, Flat-Earthers, etc., as examples of science-gone-bad. Maybe I missed it, but why don't you invoke Hitler here, as you did on comments #5 & #13 on your blog? Not such an important point, I guess....

Anyway, if you could at least show us you have a Sunday-school level of appreciation of the problems regarding your own religion, then perhaps we could try to ignore your wildly-inaccurate claims against science, and assume for the sake of argument that you have some minimal level of intellectual honesty and credibility.

Posted by: Insightful Ape | September 28, 2009 11:44 AM

A few more things, our dear troll:
Answered prayers are not "circumstantial" evidence, they are "circular" evidence. You keep looking for what you think should be there and it "strengthens your faith". That's prcecisely what Muslims do.
As for parts of the Bible from different times meshing together...haven't you read the sequel to "Gone with the Wind"?
Now as far as your getting outnumbered here is concerned, please don't expect sympathies from me. You don't like it-get a life and quit trolling the Internet.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 28, 2009 11:54 AM

I see Mr. Dowd's "theology" as word-saladism with a touch of time-cubism.

The woo appears to be strong in this one. Hang on to your wallet with a death grip, and use outside sources to double check anything he says.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 28, 2009 12:01 PM

I know the conversation has moved on (though speedweasel and Alyson Miers et al. have that well in hand), and I know it's been quoted and requoted and rerequoted, but I can't get past this:

If in a hundred years we find evidence for the Christian God it's you guys who'll have egg on your faces.

"Pascal's egg timer" was pretty funny. And many have pointed out the manifold sillinesses manifest in that sentence.

But consider it again from the writer's perspective. In 100 y all who are reading this will be dead, and if it turns out--surprise!--that the Christian God really is The Man, large and in charge, then us guys won't "have egg on our faces," we'll be flayed and roasting in maximally torturous hellfire for All Eternity, prodded by the foul pitchforks of sneering demons, our nostrils ravaged by the infernal stink of brimstone and our throats bleeding raw with screams of elemental agony...

So, that would be embarrassing!

Posted by: Brownian, OM | September 28, 2009 12:07 PM

Also, on a personal note, I continue to be amazed at the complexity of the Bible and the way different parts from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking, particularly because the people faking it were clearly either delusional or telling the truth - they certainly don't seem to have been in it for themselves...

Seriously? Are you fucking serious?! You trot out this horse chestnut and you expect to have your beliefs treated as if they were somehow more sophisticated than some toothless Arkansas hillbilly's?

Have you ever considered that other religious texts exist? Are you similarly amazed by the continuity of ideas in the Sutta Pitaka? What about the Popul Vuh (and I don't mean the obscure and irrelevant bits about the first humans being made out of mud or the great deluge, but the larger Hunahpu and Xbalanqué-ological narrative)? What about the Avesta? Was Zarathustra delusional or a liar, or are there perhaps a few more possible choices than what Lewis shoehorns into his trilemma?

Remember: men and women have fought and died for these beliefs--you might want to consider that when you ponder whether they were "in it for themselves."

Here's some friendly advice for you and your bargain-basement theologian pals: if you want someone, atheist or not, to dive head-first into your beliefs you'd do well to have beliefs that are more than puddle deep.

Posted by: Mr T | September 28, 2009 12:22 PM

I agree about Pascal's Egg Timer. It captures pretty well the subtle attempt to downplay eternal torment threatened by his supposedly benevolent god.

"Meek and mild Jesus might return in 100 years from his slumber! No, just forget for the moment that God's Papa Bear's wrath against his own failed creation that he loved and called good required a human sacrifice soup is too hot, and that the Holy Ghost's Momma Bear's purpose is just supposed to be 'mysterious' or something soup is too cold. No, science and reason couldn't possibly verify this, because I don't understand science... Anyway, in 100 years when you're dead, you'll feel a tad silly being tortured forever, won't you!"

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 28, 2009 12:37 PM

Brownian: yes, of course.
I yield to your more sophisticated theology.
For what could be worse than being apart from God's ineffable Love forever and ever?
Being tossed into a briar patch pales.

Posted by: RamblinDude | September 28, 2009 12:55 PM

Sven:

But consider it again from the writer's perspective. In 100 y all who are reading this will be dead . . .

You’ve put your finger on one of the most disturbing inconsistencies in Christian thought (at least to me). In church, you are told repeatedly that you are important, that God loves you, personally. He yearns for every individual soul to accept and worship him. He’s ecstatic when a member of the fold returns to his loving arms as a prodigal son or daughter. People often become Christians after being convinced that their individual human soul is personally important to the omnipotent, supreme Creator.

And yet, if the bible is anything, it is a collection of stories about how God treats all of humanity pretty much the same way a breeder of cattle treats the cattle—or perhaps sheep would be more appropriate. It’s an appalling catalog of the most casual indifference to entire groups that don’t measure up. Entire cities and cultures get eradicated right and left at God’s command.

While the flock gets sermonized on how important their individual uniqueness is to the Lord God Almighty, how they actually see themselves is as part of a breeding program in which they merely exhibit a desirable trait.

We’ll all be dead in a hundred years, but the breeding stock will survive (perhaps), and God, when he chooses to show himself, will then cull the herd big time and dismiss those unfit—including all those who died without seeing evidence of the God of Eternal Love—to eternal torment with little regard for their individuality. Boy, won’t they have egg on their faces.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 28, 2009 12:59 PM

nm-campbell squawked:

I don't read the comments here often, just the posts, so I can't comment on the nature of normal discussions.
But how bout this one:
"Fuck you and your Christian "Harry Potter" god. You'll most likely be dead by then and so will we. "

Hey, I was just being my typical smug atheist self (and a little grumpy when I wrote it), but the point seems to have flown over your head (galah). You were seriously warning us that evidence may turn up in 100 years that proves the historical existence of a fictional character in a fictional book. That's weapons-grade stupidity. And even if the most improbable thing happened and evidence for Harry Potter did turn up that proved him once real (magical abilities, Quidditch skills, and all), not a single one of us will likely be around a century from now to get egg on our faces.

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 28, 2009 1:19 PM

nm-campbell (#173)

Atheists, in my humble opinion, have a branding issue. I know many nice atheists. But this response from a crowd of vitriol spewing sycophants to someone you've never met from across the other side of the planet writing on a personal blog (read hobby horse) is a case in point for my suggestion.

We understand the Christian brand of "nice" and we reject it as being false, twisted, and hypocritical. Your condemnation of us as "vitriol spewing sycophants" is case in point. We're blunt and incisive precisely out of respect for one another and you simply do not get that.

You say you are in public relations and you have a public blog, yet you think we cannot criticize what you say on your blog (where you ostensibly work hard to represent your position accurately) because we haven't actually met you in person?! I'd say you don't have much of a handle on how the internet works. Or how people work. If we're getting something wrong it's because you've failed to convey your ideas in an comprehensible, non-contradictory manner.

I didn't start an argument - I put forward a series of suggestions that might make life better for all of us.

No, you put forward a series of suggestions that would make arguing with atheists easier for you. We reject your suggestions because they're hypocritical, illogical, ignorant, and basically demand that we cater to your beliefs (and not just your religious ones) and that we pretend we're as ignorant as you are about science, logic, history, etc.

There's not much I can say here to you - you've already made up your mind.

See, that's the difference between us and your ilk. When we say "show me a reason" we are saying we'll change our beliefs if you can be persuasive enough. What do you do? You assume we are lying and thus excuse yourself from having to try.

Sure, except the Bible calls Christians to be humble (to consider others better than oneself). If Christians are doing that properly then it is a credit to Christianity, this is a failing of much of the broader church, and probably, from what I understand, the American church.

You do know that every Christian says pretty much the same thing about how "those other Christians aren't doing it right and I'm not one of those Christians so your criticisms don't apply to me," right? What PZ is pointing out is that your religious beliefs require you to be something less than humble. You don't get that because you're so steeped in them.

Which is why I am suggesting some sort of Queensbury Rules for our battle for the conquest of the great unwashed.

You've realized that you're losing because this isn't a fair fight. You've got imaginary rocks to chuck and we've got very real howitzers. So you want to level the playing field by making the debate into one of style over substance. What, in the name of fuck, makes you think we'd ever agree to that?

Some of your rabid commenters come pretty close.

This is the sort of comment that we demand you back up with quotations or reference to specific posts. Oh, and calling us "rabid" is smug and dismissive and gets in the way of discussion. If you can't practice what you preach, don't preach it, fuckhead. (See, you can call me names if you want, but don't do it while telling me I can't.)

This is just not true, all my observations of the real world lend me to believe in sin, evil and brokenness as described and explained in that primitive book you pointed to.

You believe because of presupposition. You admit this yourself. What you apparently do not understand is how proper science strives to strip away presupposition along with all other biases. You're not being objective or scientific; you're indulging in the confirmation bias. It works for people in all other religions just as well as it does for you and that's why it's not adequate evidence for evaluating the objective truth of your religion.

I give you three concrete examples to the contrary - Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science...

You. Are. Fucking. Stupid.

is it not possible that people with agendas against religion are harnessing the compelling and convincing nature of science to tear down the notion of God?

Is it not possible that we have these agendas against religion because science definitively shows there is no evidence for god and thus basing ones actions on one's religious faith is harmful to all of humanity?

(#199)

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

Well, Allah provided evidence of his existence when he revealed the Qur'an through Mohammed 1377 years ago. So why don't you believe Allah is the one true god?

None of you were my original audience.

Well, you knew full well we were your audience when you referred to us as "vitriol spewing sycophants" so you can't duck out of responses to that charge by suddenly pretending it wasn't meant for us.

It's tough to be humble when you're copping this sort of barrage of hate.

You haven't been humble from the start, so don't blame it on us, you disingenous weasel.

much of the criticism has been unfounded and misled.

Back this up with quotes and explain how they're unfounded and how we're mislead. Otherwise you're just whining like a spoiled child who's been told he's a horrid little brat.

(#210)

Or, perhaps it's that there is one of me and a hundred or more of you...

Which should give you ample material for pointing out where and how our criticism is unfounded and mislead.

Posted by: AJ Milne | September 28, 2009 1:30 PM

In 100 y all who are reading this will be dead, and if it turns out--surprise!--that the Christian God really is The Man, large and in charge, then us guys won't "have egg on our faces," we'll be flayed and roasting in maximally torturous hellfire for All Eternity, prodded by the foul pitchforks of sneering demons, our nostrils ravaged by the infernal stink of brimstone and our throats bleeding raw with screams of elemental agony...

Heh. Y'know, I find myself almost... admiring of the various 'prophets' and proselytizers of the sects that pull this whole 'believe as we do or suffer horribly in the hereafter/believe as we do and get awesome perks' bit...

I mean, ya can't fault them for doing things by half measures, can you? There's nothin' especially lame nor limp about the whole attitude, at least... It's never: 'believe as we do or get slightly more painful hangnails'. And sure as shootin', they do always go all out on decorating their imaginary heavens, too... Eternal virgins, milk 'n honey... The imaginary god spares no imaginary expense...

(I mean, wow, guys... love what you've done with the place, really... Sury, okay, the white raisins thing... mebbe less convincing... but hey, this is a work in progress, I'm assuming, right?...)

Nope, there's none of this slap on the wrist, you were naughty, no dessert for you stuff. Fail to pony up proper self-abasement and groveling before the throne, fail to 'give yerself over totally to His mercy', and that's a sentence of eternity for you, pal... No possibility of parole. Ever...

Oh, and our imaginary virgins? They're hot, man. Make no mistake... Damn good milk and honey, too, rest assured. That's quality, that is...

And that's impressive in terms of the chutzpah, really... I mean, me, I'd be all tempted to make it sound marginally sane, y'know? 72 virgins? Come now... As if they're anyone's gonna buy that... I'd figure I could get away with implying they might earn semi-regular threesomes, mebbe every few weekends, I'd think...

Yep. I ain't got it to make it as a prophet, clearly...

(/And I guess used car salesman is probably right out, too... Dang.)

Posted by: marcus | September 28, 2009 1:40 PM

Man, PZ, you are on fire! Those presumptuous bastards! "Please only argue with us respectfully. Oh, and and stop using all those facts and evidence and stuff, it is unfair... cause we don't fucking have any!"

Posted by: aratina cage | September 28, 2009 1:44 PM

Oh, and our imaginary virgins? They're hot, man. Make no mistake...

AJ Milne, the Atheist Comedian on YouTube tells it like it is with the whole virgins in Heaven thing IMO. Wanting a slew of first-timers for ever and ever is something I will never understand about Judeo-Christo-Islamicists. And do they stay virgins forever or is it a one-time deal? Theists don't normally think their doctrines through very far, do they?

Posted by: Richard H. | September 28, 2009 1:55 PM

Translation, you guys are smarter than me, more rational than me, so all I have is your tone to complain about. WAAAAAHHHHH."

Or, perhaps it's that there is one of me and a hundred or more of you...

And yet, you're really only complaining about tone.

So far, you posted a list. The key theme seemed to be, "There are good arguments for my brand of theism. Please stop acting like there aren't any good arguments out there. And please stop assuming that I believed based on the bad arguments of other people's brand of theism".

PZ + other posters have responded. The theme is, "no, there really aren't. The logic-based arguments are weak and don't support your particular concept of Yaweh over all the other possible gods. The evidence-based arguments are silly, non-existent, or based on a standard of evidence so low that we'd have to accept any number of other Gods."

Sure, you're outnumbered. No one expects you to respond to every comment.

But, at some level, it's important what you're trying to do.

If your position is just, "You guys would seem nicer to me if you did ___," then great. None of us can really argue that.

if you want to change our actions, then you should show something that appeals to us. For instance, if someone can show a decent theist argument, I'd treat the position like it had more intellectual merit.

Posted by: Insightful Ape | September 28, 2009 2:08 PM

The funny thing, Milne, is that the description of those virgins. They do not fit the Chinese, or Scandinavian women, rather, only the middle easterners...
Makes you wonder how broad the sky daddy's vision is.

Posted by: robinsrule.myopenid.com | September 28, 2009 2:12 PM

nm-campbell:

Talk to most Christians and they'll say they have experienced answered prayers, become more Christlike as a result of "God's work in them", and become more, not less, convinced of the truth of their beliefs... this is the kind of circumstantial evidence I'd be talking about...

All this is explained by psychology.

...different parts [ of the Bible] from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking...

Pretty thin gruel. What else do you have?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 28, 2009 2:25 PM

*sigh*
this is just getting worse and worse:

But really, while acknowledging that history suffers from the same issues of objectivity as science, I think Christianity hinges on the historicity of Jesus. If you can convince me that he didn't exist then we'll talk.

"issues of objectivity"?!

anyway, that's just not how history works. I can't disprove the existence of Kind Arthur or Robin Hood either, but to assume that they did exist just because some old stories feature them would be idiotic and highly unprofessional for a historian. plus, if you think the correctness of a religion hinges on the historicity of the founder, I'd suggest you convert to Scientology, Mormonism, or Islam. their founders are historical facts; Christianity's, not so much.

Sure, except the Bible calls Christians to be humble (to consider others better than oneself).

it also tells them to slaughter unbelievers. every statement in the bible can be contradicted by another statement in the bible.

Like I've said in the comments on my post - there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for God's intervention. Most Christians would give up the ghost if there was no compelling continuing reason to keep them

look up the term "confirmation bias"; and then explain why believers in all other religions feel exactly the same way about their religions as you do about yours. then explain why christian "feelings" are right, but everybody elses are wrong; and then tell me WHICH flavor of Christian got it right, and how you can tell the difference between getting it right and getting it wrong.

I give you three concrete examples to the contrary - Answers in Genesis, the Flat Earth Society, and Climate Change Deniers... all use science...

look up the terms "cargo cult science" and "pseudoscience"

is it not possible that people with agendas against religion are harnessing the compelling and convincing nature of science to tear down the notion of God?

do tell: what vested interest does the average scientist have in disproving any given God?

judging from the last two sentences, I'm forced to conclude that you suffer from Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and are convinced you know what science is while actually having no clue about how it works.

Yeah, so he provided evidence 1976 years ago and people like you who didn't think he was God nailed him to a tree... the Christian God that is...

well, if us unbelievers didn't nail him to the cross, how was he going to die for your sins? of old age? also, are you even aware of the severe discrepancies in the biblical account of the crucifixion that make it a very unlikely event to have happened as described in the 30's, but rather an anachronistic device to make the Jews of the 60's and 70's empathize?

I think, given that I have investigated and rejected all other religious claims (as far as I know), it would take demonstrable evidence that the Bible is fraudulent, that the prophecies of Messiah fulfilled in Jesus were as non-specific as some maintain, and that Jesus himself did not say the stuff he said.

This statement forces me to conclude that you've never looked into historical research done on the bible. Seriously, do look into how the OT was compiled from a minimum of three separate texts (commonly referred to as the J, E, and P texts); do look into the retcon that is the fulfillment of prophecies by Jesus (which, ironically, result in him having to be born once before 4BC, and then again in 6AD). Any of these would lead an actually skeptical person to conclude that the bible is a collection of heavily edited and re-edited folklore + priestly writings + historical fiction a la "the Iliad"; nothing more, nothing less.

It's tough to be humble when you're copping this sort of barrage of hate. It's been specific rather than general and much of the criticism has been unfounded and misled.

now, if you had any sense of empathy, you just maybe could be able to infer from that why atheists are so un-nice; especially the American ones, who are one of the most despised minorities in the U.S.

Talk to most Christians and they'll say they have experienced answered prayers, become more Christlike as a result of "God's work in them", and become more, not less, convinced of the truth of their beliefs... this is the kind of circumstantial evidence I'd be talking about...

confirmation bias again. again, please explain how this differs qualitatively from the experiences of members of other religions, and how you can tell whose experiences are correct.

Also, on a personal note, I continue to be amazed at the complexity of the Bible and the way different parts from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking, particularly because the people faking it were clearly either delusional or telling the truth - they certainly don't seem to have been in it for themselves...

Type I Error, confirmation bias, Lewis' Trilemma, and historical ignorance (nothing in it for themselves? OMFG, really, please do study up especially on the P text, and the compilation/editing that happened during Constantine's time), all rolled into one. weapons-grade ignorance for the fail.

Posted by: truthspeaker | September 28, 2009 2:57 PM

2. Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

So do we. That's why we respond when you attempt to evangelize them.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 28, 2009 3:11 PM

nm-campbell, #199: Also, on a personal note, I continue to be amazed at the complexity of the Bible and the way different parts from different times mesh together in ways that I can't imagine anybody faking....

What's really funny is that when I was a Christian, I felt that the contradictions and mismatching of the Bible had to be a sign that it wasn't faked; I thought that deliberate fakers would have done a much better job at producing a consistent and coherent work.

Well, I think that's pretty funny.

Posted by: RamblinDude | September 28, 2009 3:32 PM

What's really funny is that when I was a Christian, I felt that the contradictions and mismatching of the Bible had to be a sign that it wasn't faked; I thought that deliberate fakers would have done a much better job at producing a consistent and coherent work.

Well, I think that's pretty funny.

So do I. It cracked me up.

Posted by: CJO | September 28, 2009 3:44 PM

Hell, he said "as far as I know" he's investigated all of them.

Perhaps he doesn't know very far? Would clear up a few things.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 4:01 PM

Forbidden Snowflake @209: The J&M cartoon is good but utterly misses the point. We have no evidence of "an infinite, omniscient, beneficent, immortal deity". The word "God" has been used for millennia as a metaphor for, a mythic personification of, reality. "I have faith in God" translates as "I trust reality". It didn't take a theological rocket scientist to realize that if you trust what you can't not avoid your life works better than if you resent or resist what is real. And yes, religious naturalism has no supernatural or otherworldly allegations or beliefs whatsoever. It is an empirical, evidential, evolutionary worldview. Here's the wiki page on Religious Naturalism if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_naturalism

Gadow @218: Thanks! Even though I humorously used the word "apatheism" once in my book, I never defined it. I love the definition you provided. Excellent.

Mr. T @221: My position is nothing like what you characterize or link to. And there's actually lots of religious people, from radically different backgrounds, who find this to be an easy and effective way into an evidential, ecological, evolutionary worldview: http://thankgodforevolution.com/node/1532 Plenty of atheists and skeptics also find religious naturalist language helpful. See the wikipedia page above or the Nobel laureates and skeptcs links here: http://thankgodforevolution.com/node/1460
It seems to me that we're pretty screwed as a species if hundreds of millions of religious people (soon!) don't find a way of letting go of their supernatural, otherworldly, superstitious beliefs and embracing a naturalistic version of their faith. That's what I'm trying, however ineffectively at times, to facilitate: http://bit.ly/3PfiJ

RevBigDumbChimp @205, 214, and 224: Yes, of course when I mention my book it's an advertisement! Not sure why exactly you have a problem with that. I am unabashedly evangelistic in my attempts to convert supernaturalists to naturalism. I'm trying to "sell" a mainstream scientific, evolutionary, ecological view of reality to religious people. There may be others doing so better than I, but that's my life purpose. So yes, when I mention my book you may rightfully consider it an advertisement. Wish me well.

Nerd of Redhead, OM @225: No need to hold onto you wallet. I give everything away. When my book first came out with Council Oak Books, I convinced them to allow me to make the entire book available for free. Nearly 3,500 people downloaded the entire book as a free PDF. Unfortunately, when Viking bought the rights, they no longer allowed me to do this. We also sell (and very often give away) DVDs of our best public programs (I've spoken to over a thousand religious groups over the last 8 years) and I tell people that they can freely burn as many copies as they want. We have the covers available online so people can make exact replicas of our DVDs to share with their friends, neighbors, and relatives very inexpensively. More, we've been effectively homeless for the last 8 years. We're full time itinerant evolutionary evangelists. And with respect to checking what I say with outside sources, Richard Dawkins allowed me to reprint a letter that he wrote to his daughter Juliet as an appendix in my book and 6 Nobel laureates http://michaeldowd.org/endorsements/nobel/nobel.html and lots of other scientists and skeptics/atheists have endorsed my book and the religious naturalist perspective I offer: http://michaeldowd.org/endorsements/scientists/scientists.html

Finally (not really related to this discussion thread but fun nonetheless: I recommend reading this blog post: "Groping for God": http://stuartdavis.com/blog/groping-god

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 28, 2009 4:12 PM

Lol,

New post from nm-campbell: PZ Meyers killed my blog

One day we are going to have to find this "PZ Meyers" and ask him to stop giving PZ Myers such bad name....

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 4:28 PM

As an attempt to lighten up the discussion here a little, here's a fun post from my friend Stu Davis called "Groping for God". I'm certain that most readers of Pharyngula, whatever their theological or philosophical orientation, will enjoy it (especially men): http://stuartdavis.com/blog/groping-god

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 28, 2009 4:38 PM

CJO, Jadehawk, thanks.

Posted by: Vicars Daughter | September 28, 2009 4:57 PM

Sneebly!! *snorts*

Please may I use your frabjous word, sir?

Posted by: Brownian, OM | September 28, 2009 5:00 PM

One day we are going to have to find this "PZ Meyers" and ask him to stop giving PZ Myers such bad name....

Odd that PZ Myers, a still-living, still-breathing man, is continually plagued by the lack of journalistic rigour most Christians happily assume (and insist you do, too) that the bible is free from.

If Myers → Meyers in the present, with all the easily available evidence that he is actually Dr. Myers, who's to say who he'd have become in three hundred in a pre-printing press culture? Lessee...

Myers
↓
Meyers
↓
Yemers (Oops, typo!)
↓
Yemrs
↓
Yemɹs (since we're doing this by hand, the occasional letter might get rotated as well as displaced)
↓
Yeεɹs
↓
Yesɹs
↓
Jesɹs (I sometimes add hooks to my Ys, Ts, and Is due to sloppy handwriting)
↓
Hey! Now that was unexpected.

Posted by: PhysicistDave | September 28, 2009 5:31 PM

Matt Penfold wrote to me:
> How wonderful to have studied under Feynman.
>As you understandably say, he really was quite intelligent. And from what I have read of him, and by him. he was also quite self-deprecating. It does not seem to have been a false kind of modesty, he seems to have known he was pretty good a physics, but rather he realised that, despite all he knew, he did not know nearly enough.

Yeah, of course he knew he was a good deal brighter than average, but I think he did believe his success in science was due more to hard work than to inborn genius.

He once told us that the important thing was to make one’s mistakes rapidly, catch the mistakes and correct them, and move on – i.e., he did not believe he had some superhuman ability to discover the truth, but rather that he was very diligent in finding his errors, so that he had a shot at eventually stumbling upon the truth.

That of course is a pretty good summary of the scientific method in general (and the opposite of how almost all religious believers behave!). And, of course, it fits in with Feynman’s well-known statement that the scientific method is our way of trying to avoid fooling ourselves.

Guys like Nathan Campbell understand none of this, of course. To them, science is just one set of doctrines up on the shelf, along with various religions, New Age nonsense, etc., and everyone should just pick and choose to find what fits personally.

To get Nathan to understand the idea of trying hard to reject ideas that are merely comfortable but untested would be like trying to get a dog to learn calculus.

Both critters lack the fundamental capability.

Alas, Nathan has announced on his blog his desire to have kids.

Further degradation of the Aussie gene pool!

Dave

Posted by: Eamon Knight | September 28, 2009 5:50 PM

try to address that meta-dialog. But starting with #3 babbling about "presuppositions" it goes off the rails, under the guise of a plea for civility, begins demanding concessions on the debate itself.

Methinks the man is short a clue or three.

The other reason I'm commenting is to express my annoyance with the current side-bar ad for "Compassion". I'm all for helping hungry kids, and don't in principle mind if it's a religious org that's providing the boots-on-the-ground to do it -- but this site makes it clear that it's got heavy evangelistic strings attached ("The difference is Jesus"; "Poverty needs an eternal solution" -- blech). If you get this ad, cost them a few AdSense pennies and go see for yourself. Then go donate a few dollars to almost any other relief and development group. Even World Vision looks better than this bunch.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 6:06 PM

Nerd of Redhead, OM @269: I wasn't offering you my book. If you read my comment @203 you'll see that I merely mentioned the title of my book in the context of commenting on the subject of this post. This is hardly spam. More, please don't lecture me about what PZ does and does not like. I have commented (always favorably) on many of his posts and will continue to do so. Indeed, he reviewed my book (not so favorably) two years ago and blogged about me (favorably) just a few days ago: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/prophet_patriarchpz.php

PZ is my favorite blogger. He may not agree with or fully respect my approach with religious people but I assure you that we are on the same team and have a very similar, if not identical, worldview. And again, if you read my comments youe'll see that I already have "taken my show on the road". My life is devoted to brining religious people into a science-based worldview and helping so called supernaturalists become naturalists. Do you honestly have a problem with this?

Truthspeaker, yes, of course I'm an "atheist" if "theism" is defined as believing in a literal, otherworldly, supernatural being. But as I tried to say above in comment @203, I find the theist-atheist worse than useless or distracting. It's killing the planet. Thus, I much prefer referring to myself as a religous naturalist, an emergentist, a transtheist -- or as Gadow @218 suggested, an apatheist.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 6:13 PM

Right on, Jamesbones! Excellent!

Posted by: Junvenal | September 28, 2009 7:12 PM

Now, you have gone and done it PZ. you have kill his blog, bet you're feeling a little smug?:)

http://st-eutychus.com/2009/pz-meyers-killed-my-blog/

So, Christians have been pretty guilty of wrongly accusing atheists of doing bad stuff before – but the prominent atheist PZ Meyers wrote a rebuttal to yesterday’s post, linked to it, and I was flooded with angry commenters.

I’m trying to keep up with moderating the comments (most of which seem to assume I’m an American writing for an American audience).

I’m getting there – but the traffic and comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back with regards to my webhosts, so I’m currently moving.

I’ll flick the switch soon. In the meantime – try to hold off on commenting because new comments and stuff won’t come through.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 28, 2009 7:38 PM

Mr. Dowd, do what you want. I put woomeisters in my killfile. And you are a woomeister, with nothing to say of interest.

Posted by: nothing's sacred | September 28, 2009 7:46 PM

This Nathan is so stunningly irrational that he can't even comprehend the nature of rationality. His version of it is such that, given two people, one claiming that its reasonable to expect a coin flipped a dozen times to yield about equal head and tails and the other claiming that one should expect only heads because tails have "negative energy", which is more rational is determined by how the coin actually lands -- if it happens to land heads every time, then the latter person is more rational:

how irrational are you if we’re right and you’re thumbing your nose at the omniscient omnipotent God?

if we’re right and you’re wrong then your position is the least rational position possible.

If the God of the Bible exists, and he, as a deity, gets to dictate the terms by which the world operates, then you are being irrational – particularly if what the Bible says about hell is a fair warning – by rejecting every attempt he makes (through Christians you interact with, or the Bible) you’re essentially thumbing your nose at this creator and asking to be chucked into hell – I don’t want to sell Christianity this way – but that seems to me to fit into the category of “irrational” the same way that a child who runs out onto the road in direct disobedience to their parents seems irrational…

Well, yeah, it's "the same way" if child's parents existing and being knowledgeable about road hazards is a mere baseless hypothetical, and if the child's parents "dictate the terms by which the world operates" and are the sort of people who will dictate that their child be run over by a truck for disobeying them, like that nasty little Anthony in "It's a Good Life".

Posted by: nothing's sacred | September 28, 2009 7:59 PM

blogged about me (favorably) just a few days ago

If you consider "peculiar", "strange", and "disagree" to be favorable.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 8:13 PM

Nerd of Redhead, OM @284: Grow up. Call me what you want. I may not have anything to say of interest to YOU. So what? In case you haven't noticed, there are millions of religious people who need to embrace science in your lifetime. Can't you recognize when someone is making a positive difference in the world, especially when they're on your own team? My book has sold nearly 40,000 copies. I've spoken to hundreds of thousands of people and have helped countless supernaturalists become naturalists. Get a job, my friend.

Posted by: pdferguson | September 28, 2009 8:16 PM

Michael Dowd wrote:

The word "God" has been used for millennia as a metaphor for, a mythic personification of, reality. "I have faith in God" translates as "I trust reality".

Where did you come up with this little idiocy? If anything, the phrase "I have faith in God" translates as "I trust fantasy". Faith, as Nietzsche so eloquently wrote, is not wanting to know what it true. It is wishful thinking, and not only doesn't "trust" reality, it flat out denies reality way more often than it doesn't. And that's the fundamental (pun intended) problem of all religions.

Your so-called "religious naturalism" is far removed from the mainstream of religious belief, which as always, clings fiercely to its core of supernatural beliefs. Viewed as political institutions (which all major religions are), religions would collapse overnight if the mythical foundations on which they are built suddenly were to disappear. Your claim that supernatural belief-driven religions will last only "a few more decades" is laughably naive. The little Jewish zombie on a stick is all that keeps them in private jets and mansions, free to commit a long list of black collar crimes...

Posted by: raven | September 28, 2009 8:20 PM

nd campbell the idiot:

how irrational are you if we’re right and you’re thumbing your nose at the omniscient omnipotent God?

Nathan C. is stupid and possibly mentally ill. These flakey god babblers often comes across that way.

The above quote and the others on nothing's sacred post right above this one, are just Pascal's Wager again for the millionth time. It is a flawed and senseless argument.

One could say the same thing to Nathan about Cthulhu or Zeus. What if you are following the wrong god? According to most other xian cults, Nathan is doing it wrong, wasting his time, and will go to hell anyway. If he is RCC, the fundies say he is following the church of satan. The Pope says the opposite about protestants. The mormons and Jay Dubs say they are all wrong but them.

Guy was too dumb and a waste of time. If he spent 100 years, it would still be mindless dreck.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 8:29 PM

Two good places to learn more about religious naturalism:

Religious Naturalism wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_naturalism

Religious Naturalism website:
http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | September 28, 2009 8:30 PM

To you too I say: grow up and get a job.

Dowd is not only a spammer pushing his particular brand of woo, he's patronizing about it.

Posted by: Mr T | September 28, 2009 8:34 PM

Ichthyic:

frankly, I don't really think the naturalism movement needs much of your brand of hornblowing. Instead of rambling on, why not just post a link to the most concise statement of the issue?

Good website, but that's like natural naturalism... and of course that just won't do.

This is bad faith, or at least its quest for meaning in a meaningless universe is pointless. To me the idea is vacuous, dishonest, and could even be counter-productive, to cloak naturalism in religious language about valuing myths and spirituality. Where in the fuck does naturalism allow for talk of "spirit(s)"? It has all of the dangers of the kind of muddled-thinking typical of religion, and like religion, has no apparent benefit that could outweigh the potential costs. If you're concerned about modern society imploding under stress from religions and other crackpottery, stop being such a basketcase and try to tell them how things really are, whether or not it's easy to make it sound comforting. "Evolutionary evangelist"? Pbff. I'd prefer Brother Sam.

Posted by: pdferguson | September 28, 2009 8:40 PM

To you too I say: grow up and get a job.

LEBOWSKI: ...My advice is, do what your parents did! Get a job, sir! The bums will always lose--do you hear me, Lebowski? THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS--

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 28, 2009 8:45 PM

I peacefully suggest that Pharyngula is not a judicious use of your time.

judging by his responses so far, I rather think just the opposite.

It's about time for him to get a reality check.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 28, 2009 8:50 PM

My last post of the day: I'm not a theistic evolutionist. I have no supernatual, mythic, or otherworldly beliefs whatsoever. Brother Sam is great. But do you honestly think he's going to reach your religious mother, sister, friend, or co-worker? I might. That's I think why 6 Nobel laureates endorsed my book, why Richard Dawkins let me reprint his letter as an appendix, and why Skeptic magazine's Michael Shermer said the following:

"Michael, I loved your book. Excellent. Really powerful stuff. We're fortunate to have you on our side (the "our" being humanity). Your discussion of evolutionary integrity was especially meaningful to me. I tried to do something similar to this in a couple of chapters in my book Why Darwin Matters, and in How We Believe, but you're a better preacher than I am! I really hope your book does well. When are you coming back to southern California? I'd like to schedule you to present at Caltech."

FYI, here's my latest blog post on Dawkins' new book: http://thankgodforevolution.com/category/blog

Have a great discussion gentlemen.

Bye.

Posted by: nothing's sacred | September 28, 2009 8:54 PM

I peacefully suggest that Pharyngula is not a judicious use of your time.

Certainly trying to engage Nerd the Lunkhead isn't.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | September 28, 2009 8:57 PM

That's I think why 6 Nobel laureates endorsed my book

The argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

Posted by: nothing's sacred | September 28, 2009 9:12 PM

To you too I say: grow up and get a job.

You severely undermine your message with that childish phrase; both Ichthyic and Nerd are curmudgeonly old farts who have been there and done that.

On your broader points: I'm more committed to the truth than to drafting my "religious mother, sister, friend, or co-worker" into your campaign to "help our species move into a mutually enhancing relationship with the larger body of life of which we are part and upon which we depend". My concept of naturalism is non-normative, and the status of our species is "natural" no matter how it plays out.

Posted by: Mr T | September 28, 2009 9:31 PM

Well, I suppose the plan is that we atheists get arguments from authority and popularity, while the god-bothered get appeals to emotion. It all balances out somehow. Condescend much, Mr. Dowd?

Since he's posted his last for the day, I can only wonder how Dowd describes "religious naturalism" to his audiences. I'll be bold and attempt what appear to be his own guerrilla-warfare style tactics for this: perhaps a comforting way to foster understanding of the idea would be likening it to a wolf in sheep's clothing, or perhaps a Trojan horse of some sort. You know, the type of mythological stories everyone is familiar with that could reach your mother, sister, friend, or co-worker...

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 28, 2009 9:42 PM

Ichthyic (#293)

do you know how many copies Ann Coulter's latest book sold?
what's THAT mean to you?

I sort of interpreted the boast as him saying "and my penis is really, really big." So I really don't want to know what he'd make of the figures on Coulter's book.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 28, 2009 9:47 PM

Dear A. Noyd @ 316,

He'd make the same inference that the rest of us make; namely that Ann Coulter's penis is even bigger.

Posted by: Sastra | September 28, 2009 10:12 PM

Michael Dowd is a nice guy. Michael Dowd means well. I like Michael Dowd, too.

Oh, dear.

He apparently tells Christian audiences that they can believe in God and science, because they have always meant God to represent the personification of reality. Really. Yes they have. And that's so wonderful of them. What they mean by "faith in God" is "trust in reality." Of course they do. Isn't that great? They don't need supernatural beliefs to make God meaningful. It's more meaningful without all that baggage, which they never thought very important anyway, did they? Lets hear it for God and religion! It's stronger than ever! I love you guys!

And they apparently eat it up. I'm not really surprised. If you ladle on the praise, keep repeating soothing words and phrases like God, spirit, religion, love, and faith, and act as if you're in happy agreement and thrilled to have found a wonderful new friend, a lot of people will go along and not really notice any contradictions in whatever the heck it is you're saying.

That's basically how the religious recruit. It's effective. It's inspiring.

I do wish him luck, and at the same time deplore his fuzziness and obfuscation. Which, I assume, is fine with him. The more, the merrier.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 28, 2009 10:40 PM

I also have to take issue with "I trust reality". As others have already pointed out, it's not at all like saying, "I have faith in God(s)". Furthermore, reality seems completely indifferent to my ignorance, suffering, and death. Not much to trust there.

That is very much what I find distasteful about Michael Dowd's approach. People of faith (believers) have been attempting to sway reality with their worship and devotion of particular gods for most of their lives. Such efforts would be pointless with reality, so equating their gods with reality does not make sense.

I think the way we do it is ethically better. We point out that their beliefs are and have been futile and show them how they have actually been living quite well in an atheistic reality their whole lives—they just didn't know it.

Posted by: Sastra | September 29, 2009 12:43 AM

I'm not sure, but I think that, by saying "I trust reality," Dowd only means that he has confidence that reality is ...well, what's real. As opposed to fantasy. He's not saying that Reality has our best interests at heart.

I agree with Kel re the advantage of different voices or approaches. Again, from what I can tell, Dowd isn't really advocating a kind of stealth theism. He's apparently advocating a kind of stealth atheism: it's atheism, but it looks and sounds enough like theism to allow those who want to be religious to keep all the warm fuzzies, and the sense that one is part of a grand tradition. He's redefining "God," just as Dewey and other freethinkers in the past have tried to redefine "religion."

If it works, long term, then that would be fine. I can learn to call reality "God" and co-opt rather blatantly spiritual language to talk about perfectly natural, secular things. It's not as if I have a phobia about certain words, or a rigid belief that vocabulary should never change. I don't have a lot of t-shirts with the word "atheist" on it, so that I'd have nothing to wear if I start believing in a dumb-downed naturalistic version of God. Like I said, I could live with it just fine.

If it works, long term. Which I very much doubt. And, until and unless it's really the new consensus ("God is just another word for a natural Reality!"), the tendency is going to be for subtle forms of teleology and supernaturalism to be injected into secularism. The opposite of what Dowd is trying to do.

People will use his lovely idea to flip back and forth, without noticing. They will blur distinctions between natural and supernatural concepts, much as many New Agers do now. Deepak Chopra loves to wax lyrical about how his magic-infused universe where Higher Consciousness reigns supreme is "not the least bit supernatural." When people disavow belief in the supernatural, be careful: they don't always mean what we mean. Dowd may be fooled by that, with the enthusiastic reception of his ideas.

I'm afraid that Jerry Coyne's phrase "The Waffle of Wide Appeal" may apply to Dowd's tactic: straddling the fence between viewpoints and using whichever one appeals, and then denying doing so by claiming they're both the same viewpoint, really. I'm not sure if Dowd himself is doing this -- but I seriously suspect many of his 'followers' do, have done, and will. If you are changing the meaning of common words, you've lost clarity. That just invites fuzzy-thinking.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 29, 2009 5:22 AM

Pandæmonium (I use Milton's spelling to keep Brits like Knockgoats happy) seems a much more interesting place to spend eternity. Satan may be a narcissistic, self-pitying jerk, but at least the guy can carry on a conversation. 'Tis Himself

Thænks! There's a very good British radio comedy called Old Harry's Game, set in hell. It's written by Andy Hamilton, who also plays Satan, who gets many of the best lines.

Posted by: Mr T | September 29, 2009 8:01 AM

Reality is what's real. A=A Sure, okay, thanks... that's deep. ;) I don't understand why the verb "trust" is doing all the work. Is it ontology, epistemology, morality... or what? Also, I'd like to hear how "religious naturalism" is different from pantheism, panentheism, atheism and metaphysical naturalism. Some clarification would be helpful. Is the difference about semantics or framing?

I very much agree with Sastra on this. I agree it might possibly be useful for some to try to redefine religious terms to give them natural rather than supernatural referents. However, I'm very much skeptical it will work for most believers, and think it could hinder communication and understanding rather than help.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 29, 2009 8:54 AM

Do we honestly need to be that idealistic about it? Not to advocate complete consequentialism, but surely if this approach reaches those who would otherwise reject such a worldview then there's value in it. It's not like he's lying or being deceitful in order to convert people, he's giving them essentially (as far as I can tell) the same outlook as many of us hold / support.
Criticism of Dowd sounds much like Mooney's criticism of the new atheists. And much the same response should be offered - the more voices the better! -Kel, OM

I didn't say Michael Dowd should stop trying to reach the faithfully deluded. Actually, I have no clue what kind of outlook people hold who come out of Michael Dowd's program, so I will defer to your knowledge that their outlook is similar to ours. Anything that makes sheeple into freethinkers and gives people the power to withstand religious patriarchies is great. Also, quite unlike Mooney, Michael Dowd's approach doesn't offend me in the least. But wait, I just now see Michael Dowd offered more information and a quick perusal makes me think that I have just not been understanding what he is doing.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | September 29, 2009 9:13 AM

Michael Dowd, What you are advocating sounds a bit like the Methodist Church I was brought up in and continued to attend until I was 18, although I'd stopped believing in God at 14. It was a useful experience in that when Bible thumpers approached me later in life, I usually had a better grasp of scripture than they did. However, there will always be those who insist on objectifying subjective experience. Some folks need miracles whether they are real or not.

BTW, the concept of reality is a slippery one, even in physics. Are electrons real? Photons? How about Skyrmions? Each is needed to describe different phenomena, but real?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | September 29, 2009 9:47 AM

"Religious faith (and religious language) has never been about anything but subjective reality, not objective reality. Most theists and many atheists fail to appreciate this, I think, but it's true nonetheless."

So apparently _most theists_ are wrong about what religious faith and language is about. That seems a bit of a bold claim. Maybe you mean that you _want_ it all to be subjective... which is just NOMA redux.

You realise we have a lot of young-earth creationists running around claiming that the earth and all its life is a recent creation of a god? Have you been round to tell them that they don't mean it? What _do_ they mean?

Posted by: raven | September 29, 2009 10:55 AM

I see what Michael Dowd is doing and IMO, it is OK. Not everything will appeal to everyone.

The demographic it is likely to be effective and targeted to seems like a limited one. Well, educated, intelligent moderates.

To the fundies, god is pretty anthromorphic. A powerful old white guy who drives around in a celestial pickup truck with lightning bolt racks over the back window. Who hates gays, Yankees, Democrats, nonwhites, scientists, catholics, commies etc.. Hordes of angels and demons roam the world doing stuff, apparently not having got the memo that xianity is supposed to be a monotheistic religion.

Prayer works, miracles happen, the earth is 6,000 years old, everything is running down from the Fall. But nothing matters much, because the Apocalypse, which is 2,000 years overdue, will happen any day now.

These are all Christian Dominionists. They don't want so much to convert people as they want to rule. They really do want to set up a theocracy and head on back to the Dark Ages.

Nothing is going to reach them. Their own polls show that 7 of 10 of their kids leave the churches at adulthood. What seems to be happening is that they lose the best and brightest of their kids while the hardcore gets old and dies. A slow process that will take decades but at least in the right direction.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 29, 2009 12:36 PM

To all: please do not judge the entire Religious Naturalist movement by how you are interpreting a few paragraphs of my writing. I am only one very small and rather insignificant part of this fast growing and IMHO very important movement.

See these links for a MUCH more accurate understanding of Relgious Naturalism:

TheGreatStory.org (leading Religious Naturalism education website managed by atheist/humanist science writer Connie Barlow): http://www.TheGreatStory.org

Religious Naturalism wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_naturalism

Religious Naturalism website:
http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/

Posted by: Anri | September 29, 2009 1:51 PM

Mr. Dowd, just one quick comment in response:

When I use the word "God" in my book and public program, I'm always and only meaning a mythic personification of reality. I'm very clear about this.

Ok, gotcha. That's your call, but...

But as you and I and most readers of Pharyngula know (but billion of others don't yet) reality is much better understood through empirical science (the collective intelligence of our species), than through ancient texts or religious traditions.

The problem is that everytime you do what you talk about in the first paragraph I quoted, it gives cover and comfort to the 'billions of others' you talk about in the second paragraph. It help to legitimize God-Talk.

You are, clearly, free to use the term 'god' in any sense you wish. But if you habitually use it in a way that is contrary to the way most people use it, you are going to be chronicly misunderstood.
If you're satisfied with that state of affairs, that's fine - it's your nickel - but some folks are going to think that being satisfied with being misunderstood in beneath someone of your depth of thought.

Best of luck in all things, and here's to a speedy recovery for you.

Posted by: pdferguson | September 29, 2009 2:05 PM

Michael Dowd wrote:

To all: please do not judge the entire Religious Naturalist movement by how you are interpreting a few paragraphs of my writing. I am only one very small and rather insignificant part of this fast growing and IMHO very important movement.

I have read about religious naturalism, and while I see what they are trying to say, I disagree with the need for it. Religious naturalism is at its core an apologist movement, and it does that by a misguided attempt to rewrite the history of religion. You, for example, claimed that Religious faith (and religious language) has never been about anything but subjective reality. That's just plain wrong.

I am also reminded of Daniel Dennett's theory of "belief in belief", which I think pertains to the religious naturalism movement. You are unable or unwilling to let go of some amount of belief in a higher power, and try desperately to find some sense of meaning in the universe without employing supernaturalism. You try to graft the concepts of religious belief onto scientific wonder. That's commendable to some degree, but for what purpose? To build new institutions that provide people with places to share these beliefs? To create a new, more modern version of religious mythos, presumably with a new generation of "chosen" to help interpret that mythos (ala Scientology)? What exactly is the point of religious naturalism? What do you need the "religious" part for?

There is no need to revert to religion to the awe and wonder of the universe, it's entirely possible to appreciate the universe without attaching meaning or intent that simply isn't there.

Posted by: Mr T | September 29, 2009 2:43 PM

pdferguson:

What do you need the "religious" part for?

Apparently it's needed to convince the actually religious people that naturalism can be "religious" in the sense that it "binds together" people (a possible etymology for the word "religion"), without having to actually be religious in the sense of believing in the supernatural. However, I'd like to point out there are all kinds of other English words that are not freighted with totally non-scientific and non-naturalistic connotations, such as: "social", "organizational", "communal", "unified", etc. Find your thesauri and see for yourselves.

Another example: on religiousnaturalism.org, various references to leading "spiritual" lives can be summed up as emotional and aesthetic experiences. If the basis for this philosophy is indeed science and nature, there is no need to invoke spirit when you can just talk about actually-existing phenomena like love and beauty.

It's just a bunch of word-games. It's like he thinks religious talk will somehow give wishy-washy believers some kind of cheat code for beating the Game of Rational Thinking. It doesn't work that way (for me at least). It's a hard and constant struggle, and no amount of obfuscation or self-deception is going to make it easier.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | September 29, 2009 2:56 PM

You nailed it, Owlmirror. Thanks!

Posted by: pdferguson | September 29, 2009 3:50 PM

Owlmirror wrote:

Perhaps what he is saying that there is indeed no objective reality to religious faith -- even when the believer(s) claimed that there was.

What I'm "objecting" to (pun intended) is not the distinction between objective and subjective, it's the use of the word reality. I think we're all in agreement that there is no objective reality to religious faith, I say there is no reality whatsoever.

By using the contradictory term "subjective reality", religious naturalists attempt to distance religious faith from the realm of fantasy so that they can continue to use the concepts of faith and belief (and the words themselves) in their brand of religion. It's no different that the practice of religious fundamentalists everywhere to usurp and twist words to their own purposes--just ask one of 'em about "The Truth"...

Posted by: pdferguson | September 29, 2009 5:54 PM

Mr T wrote:

That's right, in my humble opinion: there is no reality to religious faith, not even some sort of poorly-defined "subjective reality". (I did qualify your quote correctly, right? You're not saying any kind of reality doesn't exist?)

Yes, you got it right, I was referring to reality as it applies to religious faith. I wasn't trying to say there is no reality of any kind; I'll leave that to college sophomores...

As much as I have tried, I still do not find the phrase "subjective reality" very meaningful. In this discussion it is being used by Michael as a euphemism for religious fantasies, and I object to that. There is no reality to divine intervention. There is no reality to heaven and hell, to sin and atonement, to prayer. There is no reality to so many claims and practices of religions because they all involve supernaturalism, superstition, and mythology. Claiming these are "subjective reality" is an abuse of language and that doesn't help anyone.

Posted by: A. Noyd | September 30, 2009 4:55 PM

Alas, the little slimeball, Nathan, who started this all has closed comments on his own post, but not before making this lovely claim:

I’m at the point where I’m finding this whole thread pretty risible and dismissing any atheist who bothers to comment on it as a particularly foolish brand of atheist.

Seriously – what are you all trying to achieve other than trying to demonstrate the truth of my original post to anybody reading this?

I mean, wow. He's so dishonest he can't take responsibility for what he's done. No, it's all the fault of the atheists. Always and forever. And anyone who tries to argue otherwise just proves they're the wrong sort of atheist. Revolting.

Posted by: David Green | September 30, 2009 7:16 PM

Here's an easy enough to understand philosophical concept for Mr. Dawkins and everybody else: I am god. You are god. We and all the world are all manifestations of ourselves as God in the rapidly changing streams of our own non-existant consciousness.

Tada.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 30, 2009 7:29 PM

You are god. Thou art God.

Fixed.

We grok. Share water?

{I wonder if RAH ever regretted SiaSL? }

Posted by: foodandart | September 30, 2009 7:56 PM

From the Abiogenesis wiki page..

"As of 2009, no one has yet synthesized a "protocell" using basic components which would have the necessary properties of life (the so-called "bottom-up-approach"). Without such a proof-of-principle, explanations have tended to be short on specifics. However, some researchers are working in this field, notably Steen Rasmussen at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Jack Szostak at Harvard University. Others have argued that a "top-down approach" is more feasible. One such approach, attempted by Craig Venter and others at The Institute for Genomic Research, involves engineering existing prokaryotic cells with progressively fewer genes, attempting to discern at which point the most minimal requirements for life were reached. The biologist John Desmond Bernal, coined the term Biopoesis for this process, and suggested that there were a number of clearly defined "stages" that could be recognised in explaining the origin of life."

But it's not a *definitive* statement at this time.

Now when this one is answered, and the final theory of that first moment of 'life' as we know it is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'll believe that God is little more than a construct.

Until then, I take 'evolution' - the very ability of chemical chains to vary enough to create adaptable forms as proof OF a God creator.. now maybe not Yahweh, or even Vishnu.. but something.

Such is the mystery of God.

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:02 PM

Srimad Bhagvatam 1.2.30

sa evedaḿ sasarjāgre
bhagavān ātma-māyayā
sad-asad-rūpayā cāsau
guṇamayāguṇo

In the beginning of the material creation, that Absolute Personality of Godhead [Vāsudeva], in His transcendental position, created the energies of cause and effect by His own internal energy.

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:03 PM

Srimad Bhagvatam 1.2.32

yathā hy avahito vahnir
dāruṣv ekaḥ sva-yoniṣu
nāneva bhāti viśvātmā
bhūteṣu ca tathā pumān

The Lord, as Supersoul, pervades all things, just as fire permeates wood, and so He appears to be of many varieties, though He is the absolute one without a second.

Posted by: Lynna | September 30, 2009 8:05 PM

That's a fine bit of work @42, Smoggy.

With your senses all awash with a connoisseur's appreciation of sex, you still came up with stimulation for the brain as well. If you're not careful, you will rise above the level of doggerel.

Posted by: RickR | September 30, 2009 8:14 PM

Hindu spam?

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:16 PM

No, I'm just quoting some non-judeo-christian-islamic scripture :)

Posted by: Lynna | September 30, 2009 8:19 PM

Ah, two good poems in response to one post. It's PZ's Literary Salon! Cuttlefish, I enjoyed the answers in limerick form, especially this stanza:
Your description’s a bit of a mystery
When compared to a glance at the history—
You know God’s mind so well
You consign us to Hell
And you think it’s our rhetoric that’s blistery?

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:23 PM

Owlmirror, "Hindu" is a Persian/Arabic derogatory(racist) term for people living in the Indian Subcontinent. It has no meaning in terms of religion or philosophy.

Posted by: Lynna | September 30, 2009 8:31 PM

Hooray! There are advertisements for Dawkins' new book on Pharyngula. That's an improvement over some of the woo ads.

Posted by: Rorschach | September 30, 2009 8:35 PM

spammer @ 371,

No God has confirmed the truth to you thus far. This does not mean God has not confirmed the truth to others up until this point in time.

Good for you to be delusional.Now could you kindly stop posting garbage.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 30, 2009 8:38 PM

Owlmirror: No God has confirmed its truth right now, therefore it is not true.

Correction, No God has confirmed the truth to you thus far. This does not mean God has not confirmed the truth to others up until this point in time.

Ah, but even if that were true, it does mean that God is lying by omission to me and everyone else that he has not confirmed it to.

QED.

"Hindu" is a Persian/Arabic derogatory(racist) term for people living in the Indian Subcontinent. It has no meaning in terms of religion or philosophy.

WTF?

Very well then, Vedic presuppositionlist evangelism.

Oh yay².

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | September 30, 2009 8:42 PM

Owlmirror #356

{I wonder if RAH ever regretted SiaSL?}

That book made him more money than anything else he wrote. His later books were mostly an attempt to rewrite Stranger in a Strange Land with more sex and libertarian philosophy.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 30, 2009 8:45 PM

Oh, and:

"Hindu" is a Persian/Arabic derogatory(racist)^{[citation needed]} term for people living in the Indian Subcontinent. It has no meaning in terms of religion or philosophy.^{[citation needed]}

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:49 PM

By the following verse points to the Godly qualities of women:

Bhagavad Gita 10.34

mrtyuh sarva-haras caham
udbhavas ca bhavisyatam
kirtih srir vak ca narinam
smrtir medha dhrtih ksama

"I am all-devouring death, and I am the generator of all things yet to be. Among women I am fame, fortune, speech, memory, intelligence, faithfulness and patience."

Posted by: Rorschach | September 30, 2009 8:52 PM

Owlmirror, "Hindu" is a Persian/Arabic derogatory(racist) term for people living in the Indian Subcontinent. It has no meaning in terms of religion or philosophy.

According to this and that does not seem to be entirely accurate.

Posted by: kalki | September 30, 2009 8:53 PM

The following verse points to the Godly qualities of women:

Bhagavad Gita 10.34

mrtyuh sarva-haras caham
udbhavas ca bhavisyatam
kirtih srir vak ca narinam
smrtir medha dhrtih ksama

"I am all-devouring death, and I am the generator of all things yet to be. Among women I am fame, fortune, speech, memory, intelligence, faithfulness and patience."

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | September 30, 2009 8:55 PM

Nathan #375

Over 5000 historical documents provide evidence to over 500 eye witnesses to an event that occurred 2000 years ago.

Nathan, you can lie to yourself all you want, but don't try to lie to us. We know that the above statement is BULLSHIT! That's right, Nathan, you're spouting bullshit. And we're not buying your bullshit.

We know the gospels were written well after Jesus was supposed to have been killed. Don't tell us about Josephus. The passage in Antiquities of the Jews that mentions Jesus was a forgery written by a Christian apologist to provide historical evidence of Jesus's existence. Parallel sections of Josephus's Jewish War do not mention Jesus. Some Christian writers as late as the third century, who quoted from the Antiquities, don't mention the passage.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 30, 2009 9:00 PM

Wow, competing woo.

Posted by: Rorschach | September 30, 2009 9:00 PM

Oh, it swallowed my second link @ 386 ! *grumble*

I'm out of this freakshow..:-)

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 30, 2009 9:05 PM

Oh Bugger,

A raving loony turns up (oops...I mean a fellow Christian convinced of the truth of the Bible) and I have to go and crutch some sheep.

Dear Brother Nathan, please don't leave (even though you will be universally derided for your delusions and fabrications) --I'll be back in an hour or so, ready and willing to enter the fray on your behalf wearing my finest Christian codpiece. If it gets too hot in the atheist kitchen of reason and evidence, just turn over and let them baste the side where all the crap you are spouting comes from.

Yours in Missionary enthusiasm
Smoggy

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 30, 2009 9:14 PM

Take a look at:[List_of_English_words_of_Persian_origin#H]

The word origin was not what I was asking for. You wrote that "Hindu" was derogatory(racist)". Your source says that the word is ultimately Sanskrit in origin, and provides no support whatsoever for it being derogatory.

Nice autofail.

Either way, it is a word describing a group of people living at some geographical location. Its as if I called you "American" and that meant you believe in Jesus.

I agree that the term can lead to confusion, but it looks like you're going to have to argue with Hindustanis themselves about that, no matter which religion they follow.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 30, 2009 9:20 PM

The only Hindu poetry I know is the Gayatri Mantra and sadly that's only because it's the Battlestar Galactica theme

Om, we meditate upon the radiant Divine Light
of that adorable Sun of Spiritual Consciousness;
May it awaken our intuitional consciousness.

Oh, and also there's that famous phrase by Oppenheimer during the Trinity test: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."* Trinity? Bhagavad-Gita? What is it about a giant explosion that could kill tens of thousands of people that brings out the religious in a scientist?

*I have read that "I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds." is actually a better (if less dramatic) translation.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 30, 2009 9:40 PM

kalki,

Happy Blasphemy Day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdnaHHns3c0#t=28s

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 30, 2009 11:09 PM

Dear Brother Nathan @ 375,

I'm ba-ack

When God appointed me missionary to this bastion of atheist evil he never mentioned that some opinionated smugwad was going to turn up and "acknowledge and apologize for the actions of men who claim to be in the service of God when they forcefully present the Gospel." You've really pissed God off, you know. Those men were presenting the gospel (not "claiming" to) on His direct orders, and He really doesn't need you turning up to smarmily discredit a few instances of muscular witness.

Do you really think the gospel is passionate? Even Jesus finds vast tracts of it cripplingly boring. "Smoggy", he told me once. "I was happy in Heaven, kicking back like any teenager, playing Universe of Warcraft against the angels. Then suddenly I get sent by Dad to backward Palestine for thirty years, and some arseholes crucify me. Can you imagine the comedown for someone used to being a deity and cruising for alien chicks in thirteen dimensions? For me, the events of the New Testament were like being in the trenches of the Somme: long periods of boredom and misery, punctuated by short periods of terror and excruciating agony. I didn't even have sex...thirty years without one, single hump. Some of those people were none-too-hygienic, you know."

However, dear brother Nathan, while I've no idea what "invigorate the noblest of individual to panic for fervent revival" really means (other than the evident fact that you are trying to talk with a large spike through your cerebral cortex), in my Christian soul I can hear your song to God:
Delude me like that
One more time,
Once is never enough,
From a God like you!

As you say, "every person ever born or to be born has the right to choose what to believe." To which I would add, and every person has a right to kill themselves too, just so long as they don't take a whole lot of others with them in the process.

Dear, dear, dear brother Nathan. Hard as you find this to comprehend, no "anger and resentment ... will be cast [your] way for [your] Christian stance'. As long as we keep your silliness to ourselves and don't impose it on others, the atheists will all live and let live. But use the position you have arrived at after accepting an irrefutable lack of evidence, to proselytize vulnerable people and impressionable minds, and to discriminate against people on the grounds of race, gender or sexual orientation (as millions of we Christians do) and you'll find that anger and resentment will be very mild ways of describing the contempt and derision that the pharyngulating hordes will have for you.

In my considered heavenly opinion, faith is like wanking. As long as you keep it to yourself and don't inflict it on an unwilling public, you can sploodge all you like.

Yours in sticky witness
Smoggy

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 1, 2009 1:50 AM

My use of the word 'proof' will be based on what the *scientific* community together comes to agree on,

then you'll be waiting a long fucking time, since the actual scientific community, and not the strawman you erect of it, actually doesn't view research as providing "proof". Instead we seek to disprove ideas, not prove them.

The same page - yes, but little more than that.

wtf does that even mean?

are you applying this to the Theory of Evolution?

did you actually need someone who knows what the actual debates are to spell them out for you?

There is some debate (mostly philosophical) over the level of selection (individual vs. group), whether specific traits within specific populations are more affected by drift than selection, and what maintains some sexually selected traits. These are all fine points. There really is no high level debate about whether evolution exists, that selection has been demonstrated as a mechanism of it time and time again, and that there are many sources of variation (other than just random mutations) that selection or drift can act on.

that's it in a nutshell.

selection, by the way, is hardly random.

I'm not the one looking down at *you* for the things you hold dear.

you hold your ignorance dear?

frankly that hardly surprises me.

Posted by: foodandart | October 1, 2009 1:58 AM

Oooo yer cussin' now!

Tsk, tsk.. How does the use of expletives create a greater authoritative argument?

Please elucidate.

Posted by: nm-campbell | October 1, 2009 2:13 AM

"it doesn't, but then appeals to authority are YOUR bag, not ours."

I don't know, it seems to me that every time you claim an argument (say Pascal's wager) has been refuted that's an appeal to the authority that refutes it.

You're not making the case, you're relying on the case someone you hold in intellectual authority has made.

Just because the likes of PZ and Dawkins tell you that atheism is rational does not make it so...

Posted by: Kel | October 1, 2009 2:18 AM

Just because the likes of PZ and Dawkins tell you that atheism is rational does not make it so...

pfft, I thought that theism was irrational (hence atheism) long before I had even heard of PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins. Way to make a lame accusation of an appeal to authority.

Simple question, what are the good reasons to believe in any god, let alone the particular one you ascribe to? If you can't answer this, then surely atheism is not only a rational position but the only rational position...

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 1, 2009 2:27 AM

just because I'm bored and have 5 minutes...

I don't know, it seems to me that every time you claim an argument (say Pascal's wager) has been refuted that's an appeal to the authority that refutes it.

Pascal's wager presented as an argument from authority:

"Pascal's wager doesn't work. Voltaire shot it down ages ago"

Pascal's wager actually shot down:

"Pascal's wager doesn't work. All you have to do is substitute a different deity, or many deities, resulting in what amounts to an argument from inconsistent revelations, thus negating the value of wagering to begin with."

so, if you morons want to play this game, at least know the fucking rules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 1, 2009 2:29 AM

You know you want to..

do you know the meaning of the word, projection?

you have had nothing substantive to say, so why am I unsurprised to find you running away yet again?

I'm sure you shall return to taunt us a second time, oh jester of the funny hat.

Posted by: DingoJack | October 1, 2009 3:21 AM

Feynmaniac - I believe it was called "trinity" because it was a fusion-fission-fusion device. But I certainly could be wrong* - DJ
____________
* "I beseech you in the very Bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Science never knows anything with absolute certainty, it is asymptotic to the truth. Those that think they have infallible knowledge, untestable by reality (called sometimes, religion) tragically, horrifyingly, callously destroy everything they touch despite their intentions.
see: http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=ascent+of+man+13&hl=en&emb=0&aq=8&oq=Ascent+of+Man#q=%22ascent+of+man%22+%22Aschwitz%22&hl=en&emb=0

Posted by: Feynmaniac | October 1, 2009 6:06 AM

nm-campbell,

I don't know, it seems to me that every time you claim an argument (say Pascal's wager) has been refuted that's an appeal to the authority that refutes it.

Anyone who has studied Pascal's wager know it is a flawed argument. For starters, it fallaciously only takes the Christian God into consideration. It's like rolling two pair of die and only focusing on the possibilities of the sum being 2 or 3. The person making the wager needs to include Allah, the Jewish God, the Hindu gods, the Norse gods, etc. as possible outcomes as well. It's also logically possible that a God exists who rewards unbelief and punishes the faithful. If you do this you don't get the same result.

Secondly, logically you shouldn't be able to "choose" belief. Choosing to believe in God is just as silly as choosing to believe that grass is blue. It's a matter of evidence and argument, not one of if you like the outcome. Psychologically, yeah you can convince yourself of something (i.e, delude yourself) because it's desirable ('I'm not really fat', 'She really likes me', that there are five lights). However, whatever that says about that psychology of human beings a logical argument it is not.

Thirdly, it's also possible that if your all powerful God really cares that much if a bunch of humans believes in His existence, despite evidence, he won't accept that belief if it is merely a result of self-interest.

This is all very basic stuff that anyone who has spent a little time thinking about or researching Pascal's wager should know.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 6:32 AM

You're not making the case, you're relying on the case someone you hold in intellectual authority has made.
Just because the likes of PZ and Dawkins tell you that atheism is rational does not make it so... -nm-campbell

You appear to be so conditioned to accepting the authority of the church that you can't discern independent thought and expertise from appeals to authority. PZ gives some of the best descriptions of the rationality behind atheism as well as new, profound, and humorous reasons why, and for this we love him and his blog. However, many of us arrived independently at atheism or were on the way there before we knew about PZ or Dawkins. It really isn't that hard to see the irrationality of theism once you start looking and stop making smug excuses for the sake of tradition and popularity.

Posted by: 386sx | October 1, 2009 6:47 AM

Anyone who has studied Pascal's wager know it is a flawed argument. For starters, it fallaciously only takes the Christian God into consideration.

It's even more specific than that. It's the Catholic Christian God, with all the Catholic ceremonies included in the wager package deal too. What have ya got to lose!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | October 1, 2009 11:56 AM

I don't know, it seems to me that every time you claim an argument (say Pascal's wager) has been refuted that's an appeal to the authority that refutes it.

Only if you have no ability to walk through it on your own.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | October 1, 2009 5:08 PM

I was an atheist before I knew of the existence of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. I developed my atheism by myself, without help from any other atheist. When first presented with Pascal's wager, I was able to come up with Homer Simpson's rebuttal without knowledge of Matt Groening.

I realize it comes as a surprise to a goddist that there are some people capable of independent thought. Of course religion strongly discourages this thought, so you as a goddist probably don't even know it exists.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 6:30 PM

The original blog was a mistake. It assumes that atheists have a "be nice" command like Christians do. Heck, sometimes I wish I could let out a hearty "F#ck Off" too! But that would be against the Bible, and I wouldn't really mean it anyway: I'm incurably nice. Oh the advantages that atheists have!

It also assumes that atheists are always trying to reach the faithful. They aren't. Dawkins is especially clear about this. Sometimes they are trying to reach the undecided, other times they are just venting, getting things off their chests. After all, it must be pretty frustrating to see a silly and arguably harmful belief system like Christianity achieve so much power and influence, despite so many unstoppable and conclusive arguments for atheism. Or that's how I think atheists see it, as I'm not an atheist.

BTW, I'm a theist. I just don't think atheists have made that great a case. Or put it this way, the case for atheism only works if you add in some presumptions about what a good explanation must be like (natural, reductive, law-based), or some empiricist presumptions, some pieces of David Hume or the logical positivists, etc. But then it's the presumptions that will be doing most of the work, and not the evidence.

Regarding niceness in atheists, atheist philosophers seem more congenial to me than other atheists. I can read atheist philosophers and learn (and have). I think that's because atheist philosophers are more willing to look at their own presuppositions critically rather than declare that they are "obvious" (They aren't. Example: methodological naturalism.), as really smart but philosophically naive atheist scientists often do. It's the atheist scientists that seem to me to have the biggest weed up their wazoo. Dennett is far more tolerable than Dawkins. Better than both is Mackie (E.g., 747 gambit is not original to Dawkins, an earlier and arguably better version was offered by Mackie (The Miracle of Theism, pp. 148 -149)).

Posted by: CJO | October 1, 2009 6:54 PM

the case for atheism only works if you add in some presumptions about what a good explanation must be like (natural, reductive, law-based), or some empiricist presumptions, some pieces of David Hume or the logical positivists, etc.

Translation: the case for atheism only works if you care about the truth.

But then it's the presumptions that will be doing most of the work, and not the evidence.

Entirely backwards. If you don't care about the truth, you have no way to even determine what counts as evidence.

You see, the guy who fixes my car is only able to do so because he has some presumptions about what a good explanation must be like: natural, reductive, law-based.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 6:59 PM

put it this way, the case for atheism only works if you add in some presumptions about what a good explanation must be like (natural, reductive, law-based), or some empiricist presumptions, some pieces of David Hume or the logical positivists, etc. But then it's the presumptions that will be doing most of the work, and not the evidence. -believeordoubt

When you put it that way, you might as well remove your brain and fill in the warm spot with pages from your Bible.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 7:04 PM

Still waiting for "believe" to tell us why the inclusion of a deity into the world (when no single system of scientific knowledge requires or uses a deity") isn't an extraordinary claim.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 7:09 PM

Atheism is a positive claim -- it claims that God doesn't exist. -believeordoubt

No, atheism claims that there is no discernible evidence for a god (not "God" by the way, but all gods) to such a degree that it can safely be taken as fact that there are no gods. Produce evidence of a god and atheism will no longer be viable.

Posted by: CJO | October 1, 2009 7:14 PM

Which claim asserts more. Notice that both positions in any debate are claims. Jeff argues for P, John argues for not-P. Both are claims. However, some argue (Richard Swinburne) that theism claims less than atheism. Some disagree. Who's right? Atheists haven't produced any conclusive arguments.

Awferchrissakes. This is really stupid.

Okay, let's say we're looking at a little fish pond, you and I. I say, look, what a nice pond, with some fish in it. And you say, ho ho! Not just a pond, with some fish in it. For it's obvious that this pond must be ruled over by an undetectable, omnipotent Fish King, who also happens to have created the pond out of formless chaos.

Who asserts more?

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 7:16 PM

What is God? God is God. What is God made of? God stuff. How does God work? God power. How does God determine right and wrong? It doesn't: right and wrong are structured in God. How? It's God's essence. How did God's essence get to be the way it is? It didn't, God just always was. Was what? God.

But, but, but...God is LOVE. Ignore the genocide, raping a teen virgin in order to produce a child for the explicit purpose of being murdered, and the creation of Hell.

Or, forget a child-raping prophet.

Or, forget a system that says if you lie once in life you'll come back as a "lower" species.

Or, forget a system that says your heart must be ripped out for appeasement.

Or, forget a system that requires toddlers to be removed from their families to serve as monks.

Or, forget all of that for a being that goes "poof" and wishes pain, death, and suffering into existence.

God is love. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 7:20 PM

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use law-based reductive explanations, but I'm arguing that we shouldn't say that they are the only legitimate explanations.

But the ravings of bronze-age ignorami have serious explanatory power.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 1, 2009 7:24 PM

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use law-based reductive explanations, but I'm arguing that we shouldn't say that they are the only legitimate explanations.

What are other reproducible explanations?

Posted by: 386sx | October 1, 2009 7:27 PM

Thanks believeordoubt for at least admitting that there is nothing that would satisfy a burden of proof. You got nothing, and atheists got nothing, so at least everyone is on a level playing field until we get to the part where we make unwarranted presuppositions. That's where atheism loses the presupposition race, and believeordoubt ends up with a full deck of cards while atheists are left there holding an empty bag of unsatisfied burdens of proofs.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 1, 2009 7:28 PM

Are most of the atheists here of a scientific background? Any philosophers here?

Philosophy without evidence is sophistry.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 7:37 PM

CJO is such a nice atheist. :) I must admit I brought it on myself with the amateur comment. Apologies.

I actually have to get back to work, but quickly I can say this: One doesn't have to see whether or not to include non-reductive, personal, non-natural, etc explanations as a black and white issue, an all-or-nothing affair. One could say that most of the time things do go according to laws, and reserve the possibility that sometimes they don't. Why is this something that is unreasonable?

Suppose the stars suddenly aligned in a far away galaxy to spell, in a variety of languages, "I exist! Love, God." On the way that a lot of people here think, you would be committed to explaining this away. But I think that in this case that "God did it" should at least be on the table. But this explanation wouldn't be reductive, nomological, or reproducible (btw, neither is the big bang explanation reproducible.)

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 7:39 PM

Besides, we use personal explanations almost as often as reductive ones. There is the question of whether personal explanations in everyday life are reducible to non-personal ones, but that debate is far from settled.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | October 1, 2009 7:40 PM

believeordoubtthink wrote:

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use law-based reductive explanations, but I'm arguing that we shouldn't say that they are the only legitimate explanations.

You mean use [jazz hands!]Other Ways of Knowing™?

I'm fine with that - but only when you can demonstrate that the 'other ways of knowing' that support Christianity cannot also be used in exactly the same way to support any (or all) other religions. Because, since many of them are mutually exclusive and contradictory, until you can objectively show that only one is valid you can't make a claim for it being the one 'true' religion.

Or, in short: they can't all be right - but they can all be wrong.

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 1, 2009 7:41 PM

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use law-based reductive explanations

wtf does that even mean?

can you give an example of a "law-based reductive explanation"?

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 7:46 PM

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/whynotchristian.html#universe

I mentioned before that the Christian hypothesis actually predicts a completely different universe than the one we find ourselves in. For a loving God who wanted to create a universe solely to provide a home for human beings, and to bring his plan of salvation to fruition, would never have invented this universe, but something quite different. But if there is no God, then the universe we actually observe is exactly the sort of universe we would expect to observe. In other words, if there is no God then this universe is the only kind of universe we would ever find ourselves in, the only kind that could ever produce intelligent life without any supernatural cause or plan. Hence naturalist atheism predicts exactly the kind of universe we observe, while the Christian theory predicts almost none of the features of our universe. Indeed, the Christian theory predicts the universe should instead have features that in fact it doesn't, and should lack features that in fact it has. Therefore, naturalism is a better explanation than Christianity of the universe we actually find ourselves in. ...

As a more specific example, consider the size of the human brain. If God exists, then it necessarily follows that a fully functional mind can exist without a body--and if that is true, God would have no reason to give us brains. We would not need them. For being minds like him, being "made in his image," our souls could do all the work, and control our thoughts and bodies directly. At most a very minimal brain would be needed to provide interaction between the senses, nerves, and soul. A brain no larger than that of a monkey would be sufficient, since a monkey can see, hear, smell, and do pretty much everything we can, and its tiny brain is apparently adequate to the task. And had God done that--had he given us real souls that actually perform all the tasks of consciousness (seeing, feeling, thinking)--that would indeed count as evidence for his existence, and against mere atheism.

In contrast, if a mind can only be produced by a comparably complex machine, then obviously there can be no God, and the human brain would have to be very large--large enough to contain and produce a complex machine like a mind. Lo and behold, the human brain is indeed large--so large that it kills many mothers during labor (without modern medicine, the rate of mortality varies around 10% per child). This huge brain also consumes a large amount of oxygen and other resources, and it is very delicate and easily damaged. Moreover, damage to the brain profoundly harms a human's ability to perceive and think. So our large brain is a considerable handicap, the cause of needless misery and death and pointless inefficiency--which is not anything a loving engineer would give us, nor anything a good or talented engineer with godlike resources would ever settle on.

But this enormous, problematic brain is necessarily the only way conscious beings can exist if there is no God nor any other supernatural powers in the universe. If we didn't need a brain, and thus did not have one, we would be many times more efficient. All that oxygen, energy, and other materials could be saved or diverted to other functions. We would also be far less vulnerable to fatal or debilitating injury, we would be immune to brain damage and defects that impair judgment or distort perception (like schizophrenia or retardation), and we wouldn't have killed one in every ten of our mothers before the rise of modern medicine. In short, the fact that we have such large, vulnerable brains is the only way we could exist if there is no God, but is quite improbable if there is a God who loves us and wants us to do well and have a fair chance in life. Once again, atheism predicts the universe we find ourselves in. The Christian theory does not.

Why does God hate mothers?

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 7:52 PM

Regarding atheism:

"More technically, it claims that there is no good reason to believe that it does, and thus that one shouldn't."

That's an epistemological statement. I always thought atheism was saying that God doesn't exist, that is, it's an ontological claim.

Is this the new "a-theism" (non-committal to the God thesis)? If so, then okay, but it is a bit deceptive since most people outside the new atheist community use "atheist" to mean the belief that God doesn't exist. It's also deceptive in that a-theists, when pressed, probably believe atheism in the old sense as well (hereafter "ATHEISM").

The bait and switch: argue for a-theism (easier to defend), then switch in ATHEISM.

BTW: THe Old Nomenclature:

Atheism: God doesn't exist.
Theism: God exists.
Agnosticism: God might exist, or might not. I don't know.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 7:57 PM

Suppose the stars suddenly aligned in a far away galaxy to spell, in a variety of languages, "I exist! Love, God." On the way that a lot of people here think, you would be committed to explaining this away.

You are apparently an unreasonable person who believes unreasonable things about us.

I would find that evidence strongly suggestive of a god.

So, where is such evidence in the real world?

Posted by: Sastra | October 1, 2009 8:00 PM

believe or dbout #441 wrote:

First of all, the ultimate explanation of laws can't be further laws. We have examples for non-law based (though still predictable, to at least some extent) explanations: personal explanations. We make them all the time in everyday life. Some might argue (as does Swinburne) that more can be explained with an ultimately personal explanation than one that must be law based.

All explanations will eventually result in a no-longer reducible, brute fact or facts, whether that brute fact is a personal God, or not. The problem with bringing in "personal explanations" as a kind of reductive explanation is that we have to already be dealing with persons in order to use them. It does no good to ask 'why' the volcano exploded, and demand its personal explanation.

Our experience with persons, who are composed of matter and evolved to become the way they are, does not lead us to expect that we would start out with a person.

We can ask, and get physical, non-personal answers, to why people choose to do what they do, by dealing with neurology, and eventually chemistry and physics. At least, we can get started on an answer. But we can't do it the other way around. This makes the assumption of a disembodied "person" which differs in every way we know from the persons we are familiar with, problematic.

Second, assuming that all explanations must be natural is question begging in favor of naturalism.

It's a falsifiable assumption, depending on how 'supernatural' is defined. Parapsychology could falsify mind-body dualism, for example.

The fact that substance dualism is not considered seriously by neurologists is a serious problem for those who want to us dis-embodied, personal goals and desires as explanations. It's not true that science has "nothing to say" about substance dualism. It could, in theory, have confirmed it, had good evidence been there.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:02 PM

What I mean by irreducibly personal explanations are explanations that such and such is the result of a choice by an agent.

The explanation is irreducible if that choice cannot be reduced to a set of laws, brain behavior, etc.

I don't think that materialism has been proven in philosophy of mind (even Daniel Dennett agrees), but it fits better with humanist goals and projects to assume it (see Consciousness Explained, p 37.

"This fundamentally anti-scientific stance of dualism [the belief in non-material minds] is, to my mind, its most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up."

It's to avoid mystery. But what if there are genuine mysteries? Should we never be open to that?

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 1, 2009 8:05 PM

The bait and switch: argue for a-theism (easier to defend), then switch in ATHEISM.

nothing but projection on your part.

It's religion that does the bait and switch, not atheists.

religion offers a product called "salvation" based on the existence of something that can grant it... then switches out the thing that is supposed to grant it with pure fiction and says you just have to have "faith" that it will work.

THAT'S a bait-and-switch.

*sigh*

I really fucking hate relidiots like yourself that can really do nothing but project your own flaws in logic onto those you wish to debate with.

totally a waste of fucking time.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 8:08 PM

But what if there are genuine mysteries? Should we never be open to that?

Oops. God isn't love. God is MYSTERY!!!

Bow down before not knowing!

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | October 1, 2009 8:09 PM

believeordoubtthink - are you trying to use what, for want of a better expression, could be called 'the god of the semantic gaps' argument?

Are you claiming that, because different people describe their atheism in different ways and can't agree on one single, all-encompassing definition, it must necessarily be invalid; therefore, the Christian god (and only the Christian god and no other) must exist?

I live without the need to believe in gods - yours or anyone else's. Whether or not I (or anyone else who feels similarly) choose to descibe that as 'lacking belief in gods' or 'believing there are no gods' is hardly relevant since either can be remedied in a very simple way - by providing evidence and/or a compelling argument for the existence of a god.

So far no-one has managed to do that. If you think you've got something no-one else has, feel free to give it a shot and see how you fare.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:10 PM

Ithic -- I have met and read many atheists. I have read Dawkins' God Delusion (or better, I listened to it on audio CD, with him and his lovely wife reading).

But let me ask you guys this: don't you agree that God doesn't exist? Do you really find yourself non-committal on the God question?

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:11 PM

Is this the new "a-theism" (non-committal to the God thesis)? If so, then okay, but it is a bit deceptive since most people outside the new atheist community use "atheist" to mean the belief that God doesn't exist.

That's not our fault. Some people think Christianity means The Fundamentals, too, but that's not the fault of non-fundamentalist Christians. The error is the fault of the person making the error.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:17 PM

But let me ask you guys this: don't you agree that God doesn't exist? Do you really find yourself non-committal on the God question?

What does the question even mean?

What does it mean to be "committed" to the idea that God does not exist?

Are you "committed" to the idea that leprechauns do not exist?

Posted by: Bobber | October 1, 2009 8:21 PM

But let me ask you guys this: don't you agree that God doesn't exist? Do you really find yourself non-committal on the God question?

I have seen no convincing evidence for the existence of God or gods or ghosts or spirits or souls or...

Is there a possibility that what you call God exists? Sure. Is it likely? Not according to the evidence. For all intents and purposes, I am convinced, by the lack of evidence for the existence of God, that God does not exist. I do, like any thinking, rational person, leave myself open to contradictory evidence ("God spoke to me", by the way, even if it was directly to me, does not count as evidence. I have worked with the mentally ill; I know better than to trust even myself under those circumstances).

Under "redundant", see "Bobber."

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:26 PM

Wow. Such intensity of hostility here! I apologized for the amateur comment. But I seemed to have really pissed some people off. Apologies again. I'm not a troll or anything like that.

The Christian who asked atheists to be nice was mistaken, but I don't think it's too much to ask people to be civil. I will try if you will. But, honestly, it's getting too emotionally intense with the names and Fuck You's to be productive.

BTW, if ya'll want me to leave and not comment anymore, say the word and I'll disappear.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 8:29 PM

Oh NOES! someone said fuck! We must shut down the internets!

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:31 PM

"believeordoubtthink - are you trying to use what, for want of a better expression, could be called 'the god of the semantic gaps' argument?
Are you claiming that, because different people describe their atheism in different ways and can't agree on one single, all-encompassing definition, it must necessarily be invalid; therefore, the Christian god (and only the Christian god and no other) must exist?
I live without the need to believe in gods - yours or anyone else's. Whether or not I (or anyone else who feels similarly) choose to descibe that as 'lacking belief in gods' or 'believing there are no gods' is hardly relevant since either can be remedied in a very simple way - by providing evidence and/or a compelling argument for the existence of a god.
So far no-one has managed to do that. If you think you've got something no-one else has, feel free to give it a shot and see how you fare."

Okay, I don't have any qualms with this as far as it goes. I know that Anthony Flew, back in his atheist days defined atheism as a-theism, which meant mearly lack of belief in God. He wasn't sure if the God concept was a meaningful concept, if it isn't, then the claim "God doesn't exist" wouldn't be meaningful either. So he was wanting to avoid that problem with his a-theism. The new nomenclature seem to stem from there (his article "The Presumption of Atheism").

But if people are clear about what they mean, then, yes, by all means make the distinctions if they are useful.

But let me ask this: don't you believe that God doesn't exist?

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 8:34 PM

I don't think it's too much to ask people to be civil. I will try if you will. But, honestly, it's getting too emotionally intense with the names and Fuck You's to be productive. -believeordoubt

Yes it is too much (unless PZ says otherwise). You threw rocks at us:

Regarding niceness in atheists, atheist philosophers seem more congenial to me than other atheists. I can read atheist philosophers and learn (and have). I think that's because atheist philosophers are more willing to look at their own presuppositions critically rather than declare that they are "obvious" (They aren't. Example: methodological naturalism.), as really smart but philosophically naive atheist scientists often do. It's the atheist scientists that seem to me to have the biggest weed up their wazoo. Dennett is far more tolerable than Dawkins.

If you don't want our opinions of you then don't offer your opinions of us.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:35 PM

But let me ask this: don't you believe that God doesn't exist?

Do you believe that leprechauns don't exist?

It's the same question.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:39 PM

The distinctions are relevant because the claim

(1) God doesn't exist.

is stronger (has more content) than:

(2) God may or may not exist.

Non-committal is what (2) expresses. Therefore, (2) might enjoy more status as a default than (1). (1) requires evidence, where (2) doesn't.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 8:41 PM

If the voice inside your head starts telling you things you cannot know, especially things like details of events in the future, which you can write down and give to other people who can double-check, this could begin to constitute evidence for the supernatural. -SGBM

:) If you're going to allow gods as possibilities, then for gods's sakes, allow time travel! ;) How would you know that the person didn't have knowledge of the future implanted in their memory somehow? That would actually be more likely IMO.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:46 PM

I already told you most here are agnostic atheists.

Now tell me why God hates mothers.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:48 PM

"Yes, but a humanist epistemology qualifies the certainty for an empirical claim, including the theistic one. God might exist, but the likelihood isn't strong enough to think it does. In other words, very probably not."

Okay, this is clear enough. But this claim is stronger than mere a-theism, no? Thus it requires more evidential support than mere non-committal.

"It's not a bait-n-switch, virtually all the so-called new atheists make this point. Theists tend to want to push us towards a non-defensible strong claim. As I said before, you can only be certain if there's an internal contradiction in a clear definition (like a married bachelor.) We apply the same standard across the board, including the paranormal and less common claims."

If an atheist claims "God probably doesn't exist," and is clear about it, and doesn't claim mere non-committal, then it's not a bait and switch, just as long as the atheist has some reason for thinking God is improbable (at least Dawkins, and before him, Mackie actually provide arguments.).

However, burden of proof tactics offered by some atheists do use bait and switch: presume a-theism, that is, non-committal, but then conclude with no further argument that God doesn't exist. That is not a legitimate move.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:50 PM

How would you know that the person didn't have knowledge of the future implanted in their memory somehow?

Okay. Instead, the person's mind could become aware of facets of reality that are not amenable to simulation by the physical structure of the brain. Five-dimensional consciousness? A god should be able to grant such awareness.

Posted by: Sastra | October 1, 2009 8:52 PM

But let me ask this: don't you believe that God doesn't exist?

Yes. But I don't claim to know it.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 8:54 PM

"Yes, but a humanist epistemology qualifies the certainty for an empirical claim, including the leprechaunist one. Leprechauns might exist, but the likelihood isn't strong enough to think they does. In other words, very probably not."

Okay, this is clear enough. But this claim is stronger than mere a-leprechaunism, no? Thus it requires more evidential support than mere non-committal.

I see what you did there.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 8:56 PM

"believeor...saywhat? wrote:
Atheism is a positive claim -- it claims that God doesn't exist.
No, it claims that your God doesn't exist. And since you say you are familiar with Dawkin's work, you know that you are an atheist with respect to almost as many gods as we are. In fact, all but one. You're an atheist with respect to Islam, or Scientology, or thousands of other religions. Growing up in a Unitarian household, it was clear that no religion has ever come even remotely close to perceiving, much less communicating with any god or gods, if such things exist. Tossing that last remaining god of my childhood (and his son, that superhero on a stick) in the trashcan was as easy as stepping off the curb.
Gods exist only in the imagination of their believers. They are a byproduct of man's language and other brain functions, as well as the social and historical contexts in which humans live. As a positive claim, there is enormous evidence that this is correct, which is utterly damning to all religious claims (for which there is no evidence.) Both Dennett and Dawkins go into great detail about this, see also Victor Stenger's God, the Failed Hypothesis."

I don't think saying that I am an atheist regarding, say Alah, would be correct. I would say that God exists and has certain features, about some of which Muslims are mistaken.
I can't be an atheist regarding non-theistic religions, for they don't believe in God.

Regarding explanations of religious faith in terms of evolution of memes and the like, it is a competing natural explanation, but it doesn't rule out God or argue for atheism in itself. God still might exist, and use memes to do his work.

This itself might seem ad hoc, but if one can produce independent evidence for God that would reduce the ad hocness. I think there is evidence for God in the aligning of physical constants for life, and the fact that we live in a world with agents that can make significant moral choices; this is something we would expect more if there is a good God than if there isn't one (on my view God isn't completely unpredictable).

Posted by: Sastra | October 1, 2009 9:01 PM

believeordoubt #500 wrote:

If an atheist claims "God probably doesn't exist," and is clear about it, and doesn't claim mere non-committal, then it's not a bait and switch, just as long as the atheist has some reason for thinking God is improbable (at least Dawkins, and before him, Mackie actually provide arguments.).
However, burden of proof tactics offered by some atheists do use bait and switch: presume a-theism, that is, non-committal, but then conclude with no further argument that God doesn't exist. That is not a legitimate move.

The two approaches are connected, however. One can disbelieve in the memory of water, say, and point out that homeopathy both contradicts what we know of chemistry and physics, and doesn't have any strong studies to back it up. But if the homeopath pulls the all-too-common tactic of appealing to "things we don't know" and "science has been wrong before" and "how can you be sure," it's perfectly reasonable to point out the burden of proof is on them, not us. No, we can't be sure. That's not a winning point.

Again, we all start out agreeing that nature exists.

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 9:04 PM

How long could sapient animals exist, having culture and societies and particularly theory of mind, without the idea of "significant moral choices" developing?

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 9:08 PM

You can believe something even if you're not sure of it. I believe my car is parked on Serrano Avenue. If someone were to ask me if my car is on Serrano, I would say "yes." But I wouldn't bet my life on it. I wouldn't ascribe to it a probability of 1.0. Sometimes we believe things that are less than certain. And it's not irrational to do so.

That said, I'll rephrase: Do you believe that God doesn't exist? This isn't the same claim as "God certainly doesn't exist."

Richard Dawkins believes that God doesn't exist in the same ordinary way that I believe my car is on Serrano. So he's an atheist in the old-fashioned sense of believing that God doesn't exist.

Regarding leprechauns, Harry Potter, and Flying Spaghetti Monsters, I believe they don't exist. Not merely because there is a lack of evidence for them, but because they are unlikely to exist given my background information.

God is a different story. God isn't limited in the weird and specific way that the above are. Less information is required to specify an infinite limitless being than a very specific entity like Harry Potter. So Harry Potter's prior probability is low. So is the Flying Spaghetti Monster's. God is simpler than them.

This is where, perhaps, the crux of the evidential debate really is: Dawkins claims that God is so improbable given our background knowledge that an overwhelming amount of evidence is required to not only to believe in God, but to even be non-committal about it. God is so improbable, just in Himself, just like Harry Potter, that the default should be an outright denial of God's existence. At least Dawkins is clear about it.

I disagree that God is improbable the way Dawkins says. Swinburne has defended his claim that God is a simple concept, but as my post is getting long, and as other things call me, I must end here. I'll return later.

Posted by: believeordoubt | October 1, 2009 9:12 PM

Apologies again for the amateur comment. I let my emotions get the better of me. Apologies again.

I don't follow about how I am using the No True Scotsman Fallacy. How can someone be an atheist regarding a faith that doesn't believe in God? I'm taking atheist toward religion X as not believing in the god of X. But there is no god of Buddhism, or of naturalism for that matter. I can't be an atheist regarding naturalism, can I?

I'm not sure how this is really relevant anyway.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 9:13 PM

Instead, the person's mind could become aware of facets of reality that are not amenable to simulation by the physical structure of the brain. Five-dimensional consciousness? A god should be able to grant such awareness. -SGBM

Ah, but a genie could do that too, and since genies are simpler superbeings than gods, you would first have to prove a genie did not grant that person a wish (or three).

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | October 1, 2009 9:15 PM

God is a different story. God isn't limited in the weird and specific way that the above are. Less information is required to specify an infinite limitless being than a very specific entity like Harry Potter. So Harry Potter's prior probability is low. So is the Flying Spaghetti Monster's. God is simpler than them.

An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent (and various other omnis) god is simple? This is a STUPID remark. A god so powerful he can poof the entire universe into existence and so all-knowing that he can worry about every human's sex life is not simple.

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 9:17 PM

Less information is required to specify an infinite limitless being than a very specific entity like Harry Potter. -believeordoubt

Did I just read that? Did you just say that? *blink* *blink*

Posted by: pdferguson | October 1, 2009 9:18 PM

believeorwhatever wrote:

God is a different story.

No, God is NOT a different story. Once you realize that simple fact, your life will be so much better. I promise...

Posted by: Sastra | October 1, 2009 9:27 PM

Don't confuse "simpler" with "simplistic."

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 9:37 PM

Daaaaaamn. I'd better sit down and start taking notes on Sastrology.

Posted by: Mr T | October 1, 2009 9:39 PM

believerordoubt:

But let me ask this: don't you believe that God doesn't exist?

See here's the problem: you're so full of weapons-grade dumbfuckery that I can hardly figure out where to begin. You come in here, looking for some philosophers to deal with your nonsense, only to discover that you're incredibly wrong about all sorts of things. Way to blow your cover as a dishonest, egotistical troll. Then you continue with loaded questions like this. Which "God"? Describe or define this "God", and I'll have some idea how committed I am to that particular answer...

You've got nothing, right? In the mean time, I'll remind you of a quote from King Lear which theists love to abuse: nothing comes from nothing. Did this "God" fellow come from nothing? How "fine-tuned" or "irreducibly complex" is this "God"? Oh yes, please do tell us all about your comprehensive study of cosmology. Failing that, ignorance will do just fine.

@ #508, you said you're not atheist with regard to Allah, but you think Muslims are just mistaken about some features of (the very same) "God". What evidence do you have to back up a belief that they're mistaken? Should we just forget about every other religion besides the various flavors of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? How about all the polytheists, including Christians with strong beliefs in a Trinity of gods? How about other divine beings like angels and demons? Does none of that matter, as long as you have some some ultimate, imaginary friend?

Earlier you talked about "personal explanations." What exactly leads you to believe that some kind of "person" created everything? Are you merely equivocating between a "personal" kind of "faith" and the existence of a "God"-like "person"? You cannot infer from your own personal existence the existence of anyone else when you have absolutely no personal experience of them. Does your "personal explanation" for "God" amount to visions of Jesus? Has FSM whispered sweet nothings in your ear? This is the sort of vacuous bullshit that springs readily to mind, but perhaps it's all much more complicated than that. Do tell us all about your hallucinations personal evidence that must be explained by the supernatural...

Posted by: aratina cage | October 1, 2009 9:51 PM

If it is a genie, we can start by wishing for the genie to tell us all it knows about whether gods exist. -sgbm

I'm actually starting to wonder if "genies are simpler superbeings than gods" is correct after believeordoubt's astounding logic in #514. :P

Despite that, you have illustrated why a supernatural realm is sloppy thinking. If the supernatural exists, then anything is likely to happen. That clearly is not the case in reality.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | October 1, 2009 10:24 PM

believeordoubtthink wrote:

But let me ask this: don't you believe that God doesn't exist?

If you mean the Christian god then yes, I don't believe 'God' exists. Such a being is, from what I understand of Christian theology, logically impossible on several levels.

Were you to argue that the 'real' Christian god is somehow different from what the broader Christian belief system claims he is then I would then have to say that - depending on what 'new' interpretation I'm presented with - I don't know what I believe about that being because I lack the requisite information to make the decision. But, to put it simply, if it still includes Jesus then it's no-go; that particular scenario is, to put it politely, woefully inadequate to support a compelling argument for the existence of a god.

I don't make the sweeping statement 'no god(s) can possibly exist' because I have no argument against a non-interventionist deist or pantheist god.

Posted by: SEF | October 1, 2009 10:35 PM

@ believeordoubt #441:

pragmatists sometimes argue that explanations are to be judged by their fruits ... Imagine trying to operate your camera by thinking of quarks and such.

Do you operate your camera by praying at it/god?!

Science gave you/everyone the camera and its operating controls (and copious quantities of other stuff - including the vast computer network which you insult with your stupid, ignorant and dishonest presence). Religious "explanations" are all non-explanations, lacking any genuine explanatory power whatsoever. They merely continually and fruitlessly dodge the issue.

Science works; religion lies.

( Or, for the kiddies: "science rules, religion drools". )

Posted by: strange gods before me | October 1, 2009 10:36 PM

Not nearly enough blah blahs. I am on the fence, ready to be converted to Christianity and get my soul saved from the eternal hellfires, if only I can get a decent explanation of why God hates my mom.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 1, 2009 10:49 PM

if only I can get a decent explanation of why God hates my mom.

She's a woman. Isn't that enough?.

The French cultural elite and Polish government, just like Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, and God all agree: bitches ain't shit.