Why I Hate Jesus

It's Not Just the Catholics

2011-08-23T17:58:00.003-04:00

It seems that other denominations have leaders that like to victimize their congregants too. My question: didn't anyone think to question the idea of this guy having teenaged girls over to pour honey on them and then have them shower? My guess is that he got a free pass because of the undeserved honor placed on so-called holy men. Because he's in tight with Jesus, everyone assumes that he won't do something like this. It's high time that we drop the bad assumption that religious = good.

And, it's not just Xianity either, as this story shows. Yeah, these guys have even got the indifference and stonewalling of the Catholics down pat. Perhaps Hitchens was right when he said that religion poisons everything.

When Dominionists Try to Control Media

2011-07-29T14:13:00.014-04:00

I've recently found a charming (tongue firmly in cheek) little blog called GetReligion. It is supposed to be a blog where discussions of journalism and religion stories happen where the authors discuss how to make the stories more balanced. There's a recent article about the cross to be placehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd at ground zero where we find out that the article isn't as good as it could be because there are no mention of atheists that don't want a lawsuit to block the cross. Apparently, the article lacked because it didn't paint atheists in a negative enough light.

The next article they published showed us how articles that report on the gay marriage victory in NY are flawed unless they include people who are upset by this because they are acting on their deep, religious principles.

In short, it's a religious apologetics site that whinges that there's not enough pro-Xian and anti-everyone else stuff published in certain news reports. At least that's what I surmised from reading and commenting. It doesn't take a genius to scan through their articles and start to see the hints they leave. Gays = bad. Atheists = bad. Not enough mention of Xianity in a positive light = bad. Story supportive of Xianity = good. Etc. My comments were also routinely edited and/or outright deleted for not being sufficiently focused on journalism, while other comments not at all related were approved - so long as they supported the Xian stance. When called out on it, they started to make accusations of bigotry against journalists, which is funny since I never uttered a word against journalism or journalists (In fact, if they had to delete my comments for not being about journalism, how can I then be accused to posting bigoted rants against journalism/journalists?) I figured they were the run of the mill clueless gobshites that one meets all over the web. But, of course, it actually goes deeper than that.

I had linked to my blog on my comments, and wouldn't you know it, one reader hopped over here to post an excellent link that shows this blog for what it really is (HT to Jay in the comments). It turns out that GetReligion is a front for Xian Reconstructionists AKA Dominionists. These radicals want to make the Bible into our law book with such draconian measures as death for such "crimes" as homosexuality. In short, they are theocrats that want nothing more than to turn the US into a theocracy with their version of Xianity being the rule of law. And, this GetReligion blog seems to be a front for them.

Yet, the GetReligion group tries their best to proclaim that they are merely interested in journalism and they try to advocate in measured tones. This is nothing short of rank dishonesty on their part. And, what does it tell you when the advocates of Xian theocracy feel they have to lie about their motives? Well, for one it says that even they probably recognize the ridiculousness of their aims and that they can't hope to actually gain converts without deceit. It also points out the contradictory nature of a group that would seek to install Biblical law -thou shall not bear false witness - by doing just that, bearing false witness. It also shows that to them, the ends justify the means. Their vitriolic hatred of others (gays, atheists, etc) burns so hot and bright that they will do whatever they can in order to strike out at those others, no matter what it takes and no matter how dishonest and underhanded they have to be. What makes someone hate their fellow humans so much? Oh yeah, I remember - it's fundamentalist religion.

Secular Government

2011-07-25T16:29:00.006-04:00

By now, we've all heard about the horrific acts that happened in Norway over the weekend. What a deplorable loss of life. The fingers are all coming out as well as everyone trips all over themselves to point the blame at this group or that group. We do know that he belonged to a xenophobic group (right wing) that was afraid of Muslim immigration since the Muslims would all come and over-run the country and make everyone submit to Sharia law. And, he's not the only person afraid of this happening.

This is exactly why we need to have a secular government that keeps a strict separation of church and state. Not only does it protect the poor Xians from Sharia law, but it ensures that such will not happen. Of course, ironically for the Xians that want to enact a Xian government to keep out the Muslims (move to Iran if you want to see a theocracy in action) the best defense is also what keeps them from imposing their religion upon the rest of us. Only when all of our rights to freedom of religion (and freedom from religion) are honored will all of us be truly free.

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Update: This post deserves a serious shout-out.

2011-07-02T16:56:00.005-04:00

I usually don't like to brag, but ah hell, screw it, I'm gonna.

If you do a search on google for "Why people hate Jesus," this blog is the number one hit!

Woo Hoo!

We're number 1!
We're number 1!
We're number 1!
We're number 1!

(It also works for various alternates, like "Hate Jesus," "I hate Jesus," etc. I'm also number 2 for "Jesus Hate.")

Oh Florida!

2011-07-01T15:32:00.005-04:00

Talk about religious bigotry, a Lakeland Florida sheriff's department is harassing an atheist woman for having the temerity to point out their illegal use of taxpayer funds. Yes, they used taxpayer funded items as donations for religious institutions, which would constitute a clear violation of church and state. Instead of acknowledging their errors or even seeking the courts to make a ruling, they've decidehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd instead to go after this woman,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif arresting her for impersonating a lawyer, some marijuana charge, and a felony sexual charge.

Wow, this woman must be a horrible person you say, right?

Well, their case against her for impersonating a lawyer seems to be that she wrote "Esq." after her name. Oh no, they couldn't actually be that stupid/transparent/whatever, right? Apparently, this woman (who actually is a lawyer, just not currently licensed) is somehow impersonating a lawyer because she used the "Esquire" title, which as anyone knows is not reserved for lawyers. (See here and here, especially this part, "No court in the United States has ever held that merely using the title "Esquire" is evidence of anything.".)

And, her marijuana charge? Perhaps stupid of her to have marijuana, but it's a misdemeanor at most and could very well be trumped up, especially in light of the previous charge and the next one.

The felony sex charge? Well, that was for moaning too loudly and repeatedly during sex in her own home. Yes, you heard that correctly. Apparently the sheriff's office found fit to charge her for a felony for having sex in her own home.

This is nothing more than Xian fundamentalists trying to use the weight of the law to silence dissent. They are attacking and harassing a woman for speaking out for equality and equal treatment under the law. Once again, religious intolerance rears its ugly head and it seems that the perpetrators (in this case at least) have no shame nor morality to speak of. I certainly hope that this obvious case of police misuse of power is stopped and the perpetrators are summarily dismissed from service.

The Real-World Costs of Abortion Restrictions

2011-06-28T09:43:00.006-04:00

Right wing, religious, anti-choice proponents have realized that their best strategy to outlaw abortion is to chip away at it piece by piece. For example, in Nebraska (and some other states) they've outlawed abortion after the 20th week based on BS studies that are meant to look scientific. Since submitting to dogma is more important than the women this harms, I wonder if they even care about the actual cost in terms of people's lives. For example:

Last fall, Danielle and Robb Deaver of Grand Island, Neb., found that their state’s new law intruded in a wrenching personal decision. Ms. Deaver, 35, a registered nurse, was pregnant with a daughter in a wanted pregnancy, she said. She and her husband were devastated when her water broke at 22 weeks and her amniotic fluid did not rebuild.

Her doctors said that the lung and limb development of the fetus had stopped, that it had a remote chance of being born alive or able to breathe, and that she faced a chance of serious infection.

In what might have been a routine if painful choice in the past, Ms. Deaver and her husband decided to seek induced labor rather than wait for the fetus to die or emerge. But inducing labor, if it is not to save the life of the fetus, is legally defined as abortion, and doctors and hospital lawyers concluded that the procedure would be illegal under Nebraska’s new law.

After 10 days of frustration and anguish, Ms. Deaver went into labor naturally; the baby died within 15 minutes and Ms. Deaver had to be treated with intravenous antibiotics for an infection that developed.

Apparently, stupid ideology is more important than the health of the mother or the developing fetus. And, given the prevalency of slut-shaming that happens in the anti-choice movement, how will they shame this woman who is married and was actively seeking to have a child? (Here's a great post from a former anti-choice advocate who talks about slut-shaming and how it's all about shaming women.)

Meanwhile, in states like South Dakota, lawmakers are requiring women to go to pregnancy crisis centers before they can have an abortion. Nevermind the fact that these centers are not licensed, don't offer medical services, offer debunked and misleading information, and are really just vehicles for Xian ghouls to try and "save souls" by preying on women in vulnerable positions (link). The real cost, of course, is that of the women who are constantly being hounded, slut-shamed, proselytized to, made to jump through hoops, and told that they aren't able to decide what is best for their own bodies because they are simply too stupid or too emotional or too female to have their own opinions.

It's time to end these misogynistic attacks on women's reproductive freedoms. Women are not here to be baby incubators, they are not property, they are fully able to make decisions and act as autonomous units, they do not need to be slut-shamed, they do not need to hide their sexuality away as some delicate flower never to be touched until they are ready to be owned by some man in marriage and made to have offspring. If a woman wants to wait until marriage, that's her choice. If a woman wants to engage in the very human act of sex, that's also her choice. If a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, that's her choice. If her contraception fails and she chooses an abortion, that's her choice. It's past time for anti-choice zealots to realize these simple truths.

Science vs. Faith...Again

2011-06-23T13:09:00.015-04:00

I've previously written about whether science and faith can be reconciled - they can't. But, today in the HuffPo, I find someone trying to argue that only good Xians accept evolution.

What?

Apart from the obvious problems of reconciling the Bible with a naturalistic account of the origin of the universe and then subsequently with the origin of species...

Wait, what?

Apparently Mr. Dudley's claim is that Xianity has always embraced science, so standing in the way of science now is un-Xian.

In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner's view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.

This, of course, only tells half the story. Sure, Xians have always embraced science, so long as they were in control of what it said and they could easily fit it into their pre-conceived notions of how the world was supposed to work. IOW, as long as they could control the content so that it only said what they wanted, they were all for it. Look at what happened the moment scientists started to speak out and show that long-held "truths" of the church were not actually true. Galileo anyone? And, that's just one example. A more modern example is the creationist movement that attempts to hijack science classrooms and force their beliefs down everyone's throats.

But, even when Xians were supposedly supportive of science, they really were not. They were attempting to force the facts to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It was anti-scientific from the get-go. That is because science in its essence is the eschewing of faith, while religion relies on faith.

Not that everything Dudley says is bad:

Because no amount of talk about "worldviews" and "presuppositions" can change a simple fact: creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.

It has failed to explain why birds still carry genes to make teeth, whales to make legs, and humans to make tails.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record proposed by modern scientists can be used to make precise and accurate predictions about the location of transition fossils.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record demonstrates a precise order, with simple organisms in the deepest rocks and more complex ones toward the surface.

It has failed to explain why today's animals live in the same geographical area as fossils of similar species.

It has failed to explain why, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived at the same time as modern animals, we don't find the fossils of modern animals in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs.

It has failed to explain the broken genes that litter the DNA of humans and apes but are functional in lower vertebrates.

It has failed to explain how the genetic diversity we observe among humans could have arisen in a few thousand years from two biological ancestors.

Yes, exactly. Evolution explains the data, creationism is sadly lacking. But, then he goes back to claiming that it's un-Xian, and even says that those who reject the data ought to rip pages out of their Bibles:

Those who believe God created the world scientists study, even while ignoring most of the data compiled by those who study it, might as well rip dozens of pages out of their Bibles. Because if "nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible," it's basically the same thing.

The only way to "reconcile" the Bible with the natural world is to ignore the data. It's not the creationists that should be ripping out pages, it's Dudley. He's engaging in post-hoc rationalizations in order to shoehorn his Bible into the scientific knowledge of the day and greatly distorting it in the process - it would be better for him to simply jettison the superstitious mythology known as Xianity. It would be great if he were correct and we could maybe convince Xians to stop ignoring the scientific data and even actively fighting against it, but it wouldn't be true.

Bravery of the Skeptic

2011-06-09T13:45:00.008-04:00

Sometimes I peruse some of the older posts on blogs that I frequent and it leads me down some interesting rabbit holes. Going through some of PZ Myers' old stuff I came across a book review, which lead me to an apologist's blog, which lead me to a curious entry from said apologist wherein he claims that skepticism and freethought are cowardly positions to take.

I thought I would address some things about his piece:

1) I highly doubt he makes a good skeptic.

2)

Bob, on the other hand, is making a definitive statement that he is prepared to back up.

Since Bob in this case presents the theist and is willing to make positive statements that he is prepared to back up...where is the backing up of Xianity? Why can no one put forth coherent, cogent, and compelling reasons to actually believe?

3) Um, causality does not always hold in the quantum world - so the gotcha put forth is not really a gotcha after all.

4) The big bang shows that the universe was not eternal and unchanging, not that the singularity popped out of nothingness. But, time is an element of the behavior of light in this universe, and so asking about time "before" the big bang may very well be meaningless. Causality also happens to be a concept that depends on time and the laws of physics, which the author points out break down during the big bang, thus defeating his own argument.

5) The reason for the argument that the universe must have a cause is so that the theist can seize upon the idea that goddidit. This is nothing more than a fallacious god of the gaps argument, however, and further it leads to turtles all the way down once one asks what caused god. (The theist will reply that god is uncaused which is special pleading, or that god is uncaused and eternal and therefore didn't come into being and does not need a cause, which is also special pleading and destroys usual Xian ideas that god is perfect and unchanging in the process.)

But, all that aside, the reason I wrote this is because he seriously misconstrues why it's brave to be a skeptic! Sure, in terms of the belief itself, it's a bit more brave to put oneself out there and make a claim that could be wrong. It's more rational to hold the atheist's position, and therefore safer in a way, but that completely misses the point.

Going against the herd is always difficult, especially for social animals like humans. The easy thing to do is put one's head down and simply agree with the rest of the people around you and mouth your prayers and hymns to a god that you don't believe in. Doing this at least gets you peace and quiet.

People have, throughout recorded history, been killed for the sins of apostasy, blasphemy, and heretical thought. Socrates was killed for his heretical stance that went against the political tides. But, even now people can still be killed in many parts of the world for not believing in a specific deity or conforming to the beliefs of the majority, whether it's fatwas in the Muslim world or people performing abortions in the Bible belt. Being a skeptic raises the ire of the people who fervently believe and puts the skeptic at risk simply for daring to have different thoughts and a rational standard of necessary evidence before swallowing the superstitious claims of theists.

When Madalyn Murray O'Hair stood up to protest school prayer, she was called the "most hated woman in America."

Vocal atheists like Justin Vacula routinely receive hate mail.

Webster Cook was threatened with bodily harm and death for taking a communion wafer and not eating it, which touched off the whole "Crackergate" controversy.

Damon Fowler) has received death threats, intolerance from school officials and fellow students, been thrown out of his house by his own bigoted parents and forced to move 6 hours away to a new state and live with his brother and all for skepticism.

It would be much easier for all of them and all of the rest of us to just be quiet and not rock the boat. We could sit there and watch as the majority runs roughshod all over our rights and tries to silence us all through abuse and threats of violence, but many people don't. Many people take the skeptical stance and stand up to be counted. Many people don't simply accept what's been spoon-fed to them all their lives and don't simply go with the herd. That's what's brave about it.

It's Not Learned or Taught

2011-06-08T11:42:00.010-04:00

"Religion teaches us..."

"What we learn from religion is..."

How many times have we seen these phrases or something similar? I have an idea, let's stop using them, because they are invariably followed by some inane ramblings that are either nonsensical, untrue, or both. For example:

'Religion teaches us about our relationship to god.'

Really? It teaches us something that's nonsensical and completely fabricated? And, whose religion? How does anyone know that the claims made by this religion are true or make sense? They don't? Oh, I see.

If we are being honest, there's nothing we can claim that we learn from religion or that we've been taught by religion, as religion is nothing more than made up claims that talk about nonsensical ideas that can not actually be evaluated. We may as well claim that religion has taught us that yjujkfdi saiojnn snoaing as that makes just as much sense as any claims to made-up invisible sky faeries and our relationships to them. Let's expunge these phrases from our lexicon for truth's sake.

Abuse, Abuse, and Abortion

2011-06-02T08:38:00.009-04:00

A trio of recent news items have caught my eye, and I wanted to pass them on as well as some thoughts and comments.

1. A couple weeks ago the US Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a report on the abuse cases happening here in the US. Miranda Celeste does an exceptional job of pointing out what is wrong with the report (actually, exceptional isn't a strong enough word). To sum up, they rely on limited and untrustworthy data from dubious sources, redefine "pedophilia" in order to make their percentages look better, and make numerous attempts to re-locate all the blame on other sources, such as the prevailing culture and lack of training (in how not to abuse children). In conclusion, Ms. Celeste says:

Time and time again we have seen that the Church will do whatever it takes to downplay and/or cover up their failings and crimes. They have shown their willingness to fight dirty, and one of the most useful and effective tools in their arsenal is their dominance of the discourse and conversation (both in the media and elsewhere) about these issues. The Causes and Context study is a textbook example of this: when the media reports its “takeaways” without providing context, they are, in effect, doing the Church’s face-saving dirty work for them.

...

Don’t shut up, even when you feel like you’re repeating yourself. It took me a while to realize that the reason I’ve sometimes been repetitive when writing about this is that the Church itself has repeated the same crimes and the same institutionally sanctioned cover-ups over and over again. They repeatedly refuse to admit their culpability or to face legal punishment when appropriate. And, most importantly, they repeatedly deny outsiders access to their files that contain information on the sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups of that abuse.

Until the day that they allow that access, until the day that the light of public scrutiny is finally able to illuminate and reveal the darkest and most disturbing aspects of the Church, we owe it to the victims to never, ever shut up.

She hits the nail on the head. And, it can not be stressed enough that the crimes of abuse are horrible, but what really gets me going is that the church has facilitated these crimes, covered up these crimes, made excuses for these crimes and cover-ups that point all the blame elsewhere instead of owning up to it, and shown no regard for their actions and made no attempt at atonement or responsibility.

2. And, speaking of abuse, one California mother thought it a good idea to slit her children's throats because of the rapture. Luckily the children were saved and she's incarcerated right now, but this illustrates quite well the real harm that such religiously derived irrational beliefs can cause to the people who uncritically accept such ridiculous beliefs.

3. But, hey, on the lighter side of things, if you ever want to go to a fun, hip, happening place to kill some babies, the Abortionplex is for you!

Demon Overlords or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rapture

2011-05-23T07:21:00.007-04:00

Well, the Rapture came upon us and demons own all of our souls now. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the demons will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new demon overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted atheist blogger, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground brimstone mines.

Update:

Well, this blogger was possibly a little hasty earlier - would like to reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. It may not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have...for now.

But seriously, what will happen with this church? When will the excuses come, and what will they be? Or, will they walk away with the $80M dollars so far donated to their church? Of course a failed prediction in 1994 didn't stop them from gaining more followers and more income, so maybe they'll just ramp up the rhetoric and work towards even more followers and more income.

In their defense, the article does point out that Camping has not taken money for his own personal salary, so he may actually believe this stuff - which would be pretty sad. Still, the church is operating under the idea that, "A fool and his money are soon separated," which is morally problematic. Still, it should be interesting to see what comes of this, although if history is any sort of guide, the believers will find some way to rationalize the failed prediction. That's what happens when your position is not based on logic or reason.

(Shamelessly stolen from the Simpsons...)

Hawkings on Heaven

2011-05-19T14:45:00.007-04:00

Stephen Hawking has said that heaven is a fairy tale, and really, who can argue with that? Heaven is completely unevidenced and not even well thought through. What is heaven like? Has anyone come up with a conception of heaven that isn't self-contradictory or at least contradictory to the ideas of the religion that spawned it?

What Part Actually Happened?

2011-05-02T17:18:00.004-04:00

A recent commenter was extolling the historical accuracy of the Bible and I got to thinking about it. So, let's focus on the stories of the OT for now and actually look at the historicity of the Bible.

Genesis - god creates the universe in 6 literal days - didn't happen.
Adam and Eve - didn't exist.
The Exodus - didn't happen (there's no evidence for it and the evidence we do have indicates that the Jews were never in Egypt).
Jonah and the whale - didn't happen. Whales don't eat people.
The conquest of Canaan and all the genocides - much as I like to harp on theists for this, they didn't happen. Of course, I still feel justified because they are in the book and described as their perfect, omni-max god's actions, so it's fair game.

The more I think about it, the more difficult I find it to think up any story in there that actually is historically accurate. Anyone care to stand up for the Bible's (OT - I'll talk NT in a later post) historicity?

These People Already Played with Fire...

2011-04-22T16:14:00.005-04:00

Touchdown Jesus is now set to be rebuilt as a new statue, and I have to wonder, didn't these people learn their lesson the first time?

If their god is omni-max then that means that the statue burning down was part of his divine plan, i.e. god didn't want that statue there any longer. Are they not once again risking the wrath of god by putting it back up? Next time god might smite the whole town or the whole state or allow terrorists to blow something else up or allow a devastating hurricane or earthquake to decimate a whole city. Who do these people think they are tempting fate the way they are. I say it's time for them to repent of their statue building ways and beg for god's mercy. Anything else might put us all in grave danger!

Administrative Note

2011-04-22T07:26:00.003-04:00

A recent commenter has noted that her comment did not appear after she thought she saw it on the site, twice. I decided to check the spam filter and found that not only her comment was there, but a couple other comments have been deposited over the last month. I had not been checking the spam filter since it never seemed to actually block anything - until now. I will start to monitor it more closely. If you feel that a comment may be caught in the spam filter, please let me know and I'll see if it's there.

As for the comments that were in there, oddly enough some of them were the same as comments that were already posted. The ones that were not duplicates I went ahead and posted to the site (better late then never, right?) I apologize for the administrative SNAFU.

More Examples of how Religions are Anti-Women

2011-04-09T10:23:00.005-04:00

Wow, it's another disgusting story of a girl raped by a Muslim who then is blamed and put to death. In a giant bout of blaming the victim, somehow it is this girl's fault for being raped and she needs to be punished. And, her family is now under protection because they are getting others in trouble for carrying out such a heinous act. Where is the sanity?

And, closer to home, we find this charming video. To be honest, I'm not seeing much difference between what the narrator is advocating here and the behavior in Bangladesh. The narrator sounds like a rapist in waiting, and further, he'd be fully prepared to blame the girl/woman for being too provocative.

It's time for these religious [expletive deleted] to grow up and start taking responsibility for their own lives and urges. Yes, you may be attracted to a woman on the street. Deal with it and join the human race.

Immersion Therapy for Whom?

2011-03-29T16:44:00.006-04:00

Really?

I'm struggling to find the words to adequately express myself here, so I think I'll simply say that only religion can lead to such an effed up situation.

Mormon intolerance towards gays

2011-03-20T13:00:00.003-04:00

Those people that come to your door to tell you all about their god are generally either Jehovah's witnesses or Mormons. And, those mormons are always dressed in nice clothes (but not too nice) and very clean cut. Oh, they must be such nice people...until you learn about the bigotry that pervades this church. Until only a couple decades ago blacks were thought of as cursed and wicked. But, more recently, we have the efforts of the Mormon church to block equal rights for LGBT citizens of California.

While Proposition 8 still sits in the courts (why it's even there I can't fathom considering it should be a no-brainer to grant equal rights to gays citizens and all citizens really) we know how it got there. I recommend anyone interested to see story behind the scenes to pick up the documentary, 8 the Mormon Proposition. In it, you can learn about how the Mormon church and some of its members are so anti-gay that they took money from their own children's college funds in order to make sure that gays can't enjoy full citizenship status. It's truly insane - and that's not all of it.

Why don't they get rid of the pretext and formally join forces with Fred Phelps.

Would you go back?

2011-03-12T13:54:00.004-05:00

So, what would you do if you were running a religion facing multiple scandals and dwindling attendance to the point that you were becoming almost completely irrelevant. Well, if you're the catholic church, you spend money on a website and make ads in order to get people to come back.

Apparently, they've discovered that people can be influenced by television ads, so they've decided to give it a try in order to bring more suckers...I mean worshipers in the door.

Of course, their website is designed to not really address the issues. I mean, in the FAQ on morality, there's nothing in there about how old is too old for young children to be molested by their priests who will then be shuttled around and shielded from both any type of enforcement (law or otherwise.) But, hey, they're giving us "god's words" right?

I really hope that people don't fall for this obvious BS and the church continues to dwindle into oblivion. The catholic church is a beacon of dogma, irrationality, intolerance, and criminal activity. It has been for a long time now and it's high time that civilized, rational folks toss the idea of the church into the waste bin.

New Attempted Defense of Genocide

2011-03-05T11:56:00.004-05:00

From the epic fail logs...

Yes, we have a pretty new defense of the Amalekite genocide.

Point #1-The Amalekites were not sitting around playing tiddly-winks, committing various, pagan inspired acts of charity and leading the Ancient Near East toward any sort of awe-inspiring enlightenment. Quite the opposite in fact.

Ah yes, the "Amalekites were evil" defense. See, the Amalekites attacked the Jews on their exodus (which never happened - but we can assume it did for the purposes of the argument) and god now wants revenge. So, he waits for how many years and then has his people go and utterly wipe his enemies off the face of the Earth. Of course, those enemies are probably long since dead by the time god comes to punish their descendants for their heinous crime that god could have stopped, but thought it was better to let more people die so that he could come later and have a genocide.

Ah, but the Amalekites also killed their own children...so what better way to put a stop to that than wiping them all out, especially killing the children. Let's see those dead Amalekites kill their dead children now! That'll show 'em.

Point #2-The killing of the animals owned by the Amalekites actually had a purpose.

Yes, because genocide that doesn't make you wealthier somehow makes it OK?

Point #3-The weight of evidence suggests that God was being hyperbolic when he commanded the destruction of the Amalekites.

Yeah, right. And, god was being hyperbolic in all instances where he demands genocide, and it's clearly denoted in the text...oh wait, it's not. Of course, here the apologist is basically tossing out the Bible and saying that we can't trust god's word. If that's the way he wants to play it...well go ahead. I agree, let's not trust the Bible. Now, why is it that you're a Xian again Mr. apologist?

I really wish Xians would stop trying to defend such monstrous notions in the Bible and leave their tired, archaic, bloodthirsty, and evil superstitions behind. It's time that we all stepped into the modern age and stopped trying to live with and defend the petty and barbaric writings of past generations.

Let's Blame [Insert Hated Group] for [Insert Natural Disaster Here]

2011-02-28T16:26:00.005-05:00

Whether it's Boobquake or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on everyone he hates it seems that now-a-days you can't swing a dead cat around a disaster site without some ghoulish religious a-holes blaming it on people they hate. So, on the heels of my last post, let me present to you the "Christchurch Quake."

Yes, that's right, it's not horrific enough that the death toll stands at 154 in this terrible disaster, but some religious group is taking it upon themselves to use it as a tool for hatred against others. It's just another shining example of religious non-tolerance.

[Note: As it turns out, the actual website is suspended at least for now, else I would have linked it. Also, although no one has explicitly claimed this for any religious group that I know of, it's pretty obvious that it's a religious group, probably Mormons.]

Religious Intolerants

2011-02-22T11:09:00.010-05:00

This may end up being a post series, since there are so many examples that one could cite for the religious being intolerant of others. Whether it's Muslims flying planes into buildings (no link needed I trust) or rioting/killing over cartoons of Mohammed, Xians petitioning for their right to be bigots or killing abortion providers, or Jewish communities that try to impose their religious values on all those around them or theocratic Jews making pronouncements about the role of gentiles (to serve the Jews) - examples abound.

Instead, today I'd like to focus on something else - a sports story from the midwest.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Fourteen-year-old wrestler Cassy Herkelman doesn't need anybody protecting her from anything. She's broken her collarbone, split her lip, deviated her septum, wrecked her elbow, all from wrestling. She's about as dainty as a forklift.

She's her district's pony-tailed, 112-pound champion wrestler, boy or girl, kangaroo or camel. She's not a tulip, isn't a Jane Austen character, and doesn't wilt in the heat.

So why did her first opponent in the Iowa state high school wrestling tournament default rather than wrestle her?

Because "wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times," said 16-year-old home-schooled sophomore Joel Northrup, in a statement. "As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner."

Why am I not surprised that Joel is home-schooled? But, yes, it's a matter of his faith (religion) that he's not supposed to competitively wrestle a young woman and it shows another example of religious bigotry, this time aimed at women.

"We believe in the elevation and respect of woman," the father told the Des Moines Register, "and we don't think that wrestling a woman is the right thing to do. Body slamming and takedowns -- full contact sport is not how to do that."

Yes, of course, the old, "We respect women, so we have to ensure that we treat them like delicate flowers that need to always be protected and kept away from anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities." Nevermind the fact that she had earned her way to the state tournament by...(wait for it)...wrestling. But, if his religion teaches him this, then it's quite plainly teaching him sexism and intolerance.

I do, however, need to take issue with one thing the author states:

I don't feel as bad for Cassy as I do for Joel. He was the fifth-ranked wrestler in the state at 112 pounds. He was 35-4. He had a chance to win the whole thing. In Iowa, that means a lifetime of people buying you lunch. It's corn-state royalty. To give all that up to protect a girl who loathes being protected? What a waste of a dream.

In no way would I ever think that him throwing away his chance at winning a competition should make us feel sorrier for him than the sexism that she has endured in this. I do, however, feel some sympathy for him, and here's why. This stance of his is a learned behavior. He's been indoctrinated into a religion that teaches sexism and intolerance. Here's to hoping that one day we can all throw off the shackles of religious intolerance and make the world a better place.

Urgent Message: Riddles to Follow

2010-06-02T15:49:00.006-04:00

If your house were burning down around you and I was trying to inform you of that to save your life, which would be the most effective way of communicating that to you?

1. Should I tell you directly, "Your house is on fire! You've got to get out now!"

or

2. Should I say something like, "jyot hnhus jsk jskjfa najkhei nkhand laliike laieh akjsk fjksjks jeisjg kjstj sljeijasn andksi," and then inform you that, "The string of gibberish is actually a code that looks foolish only to those who haven't been granted the magic decoder ring, and given that ring, you'll know the truth of what I'm saying."

Most rational people would say that approach 1 is the best one to use. Xians, OTOH, should claim that approach 2 is the best to use.

You see, god really, really, really wants us all to be saved, so he writes a book about it. But, the book looks like foolishness to all those who don't already believe, which is a gift bestowed by...wait for it...god. So, god has to hand you the magic decoder ring in order to read his own book and make heads or tails of it (or at least not see it for the contradiction ridden and superstitious mythology it is), although he really wants all of us to understand and be saved from the fire. It's method number 2. Seeing as how Xians believe that god is perfect, they must believe that this method is the perfect method to use to get across such important life or death matters.

Me, I see it as a huge logical failing on god's part if he were to exist, and on the part of the Xian myth.

Benevolence and Happiness

2010-05-26T17:19:00.008-04:00

My previous post has sparked some lively commentary (starting here and going forward) from one of our resident anonymous theists (Xians). Apparently writing a post about a specific theistic complaint and pointing out that it is a straw man is the same as being dishonest because somehow I'm claiming that happiness equates to what is best for us.

So, let's open up this thread for our anonymous thread hijacker to go ahead and defend his accusations and to defend his positions. For my part, I'll go ahead and open.

It's a rather complicated thing to talk about happiness, what is best for us, and omni-benevolence. So, I will try to keep the discussion from getting too deep and sum up my position.

First we have to think about what we mean by the terms and what conditions we are going to accept. We should conclude that happiness is that which makes people happy. Sometimes people are happy by getting ice cream or having a back rub, while others are made happy by getting handcuffed and whipped. What is "best for us" would be that which enriches or betters our lives. As for conditions, are we talking only about this world, this time, or are we talking long term and any possible world?

This is important, because what is best for us at this moment may not be what is best for us in the future. Also, delayed happiness now may lead to greater happiness in the future, so time is an important factor.

The final important factor is the supposed attributes of god, of which omni-benevolence is one. It's important that we don't leave out the rest, however, since many contradictions arise from trying to accommodate all of god's supposed qualities.

So, should god do what is "best for us," and is that the same as happiness? I think it's quite clear from the above that that question isn't very well answerable without setting the parameters that pertain to the question. It's far easier to talk about god's role in all this. Should he indeed do what is best for us? Let's consider the possibilities. Given the limitations of humans and this world, god may be justified at times in allowing us to learn lessons "the hard way." Of course, I would put limits on that. I wouldn't think that a child shooting himself in the face is a very justifiable way of "learning the hard way," that guns are dangerous. Innocuous things, however, we may be able to look past.

But, the problem with this is that is ignores the roles of the rest of god's attributes. If god has the power to eliminate evil, why create it at all? Would not it have been better to not create humans at all if it meant that evil would also not be created? Why would a perfect god need to create humans at all - god is already perfect and wants for nothing. god can't create more good by resorting to evil, since god was already perfectly good. This leaves us with the conundrum of the problem of evil, which theists have no answer for. A truly perfect and omni-max god would not have created us to begin with and therefore the ideas that happiness is what is best for us would not have ever been formulated. We would never have known about it because we would never have existed.

Now, I happen to enjoy existence, but it's simply incompatible with the idea of an omni-max god. Another way of looking at it would be that true happiness and what is best for us wouldn't even be considerations, because we'd never have to worry about either of them. So, in the end, I object to the theist's accusations and I object to the theist's straw man position.

Don't Want him?

2010-05-19T16:47:00.007-04:00

How often have you heard or uttered the following phrase, or some variation of it:

The problem with atheists is that they don't want to believe in god.

It's a common complaint of theists. Us mean old nasty atheists don't want no god runnin' our lives. But, why should that be considered a problem?

Belief in god does not make one more moral.

Why would we want to have a god around if that god is the one described in the Bible. This god goes on murderous rampages and makes life horrible for many people. Then, not content to simply make our lives brutish and painful, this god decides that he should also sentence us to eternal torture for even the slightest transgression (moral or otherwise) which we have no choice but to commit at some point in our lives (since no one is perfect). Why should anyone want that sort of god?

Of course, the person here is saying that there is something wrong with us for not wanting any sort of god, but that's simply not true. If there truly were a benevolent god that could make us all happy, why would we not want that? IOW, the original statement is quite possibly a straw man for many atheist who would be quite happy to have an actual benevolent god looking over us. Unfortunately, the facts simply don't support it.

Can You Prove It?

2010-05-10T17:31:00.006-04:00

Why believe in that which can't be shown?

The theist may assert that it makes more sense to believe in god than not because it can be shown that god exist while it can't be shown that god doesn't exist. IOW, the atheist is taking an unprovable position while the theist is taking one that can be confirmed. Therefore, the argument goes, the atheist is taking on a position that can never be confirmed, only disconfirmed, which is a losing bet. Therefore, it doesn't make any sense to be an atheist, since you can only be proven wrong, but never proven right.

This is a variation on the oft-heard argument from theists that, "You can't prove my god doesn't exist, so I'm gonna believe until you can." And, yes, I've heard both versions of this argument.

So, let's think about this idea for a bit. If we went by this "logic," we'd also have to decide that it's better to believe in unicorns, leprechauns, etc. Isn't it an unprovable position to take that unicorns/leprechauns/etc don't exist? Well, of course it is. It's just as unprovable as the idea that god does not exist. So, if the theist is justified in believing in god, then everyone is also justified in believing any other idea/creature/etc for which that non-existence is unprovable.

Of course, this is an untenable position to take for the theist. Claiming that their god belief is warranted while other beliefs are not would simply be a case of special pleading. This is why we should rightly recognize that the burden of proof lies on the one making the positive declaration - a position the theist holds by claiming that god exists. Without meeting this burden of proof, the rational position is to simply not accept the claim that god does exist, regardless of whether it can ultimately be proven or not.

Behold, here endeth the blaspheming!

2010-05-10T16:47:00.002-04:00

Let us pray, and let us rejoice, for Jesus is Lord of all and saviour of the righteous! O, Jesus, how beautiful art thou! Here endeth the post.

Hellish Contradictions and Legalism

2010-05-04T17:25:00.005-04:00

Well, Tracy has a post up about hell which Tink responded to and I went ahead and commented on (both posts actually). And, it got me to thinking about hell, the doctrine of faith alone leading to salvation, and the age of accountability. So, somewhat off-topic, but here goes - and I think this will just add to the mix...

So, Tracy was a bit upset at contemplating the idea that Anne Frank may right now be in hell, right alongside Hitler. While I may contend that Hitler had a better chance of getting into heaven, so Anne may not be beside the leader behind her being killed, that's not the point here. Even if they are both in hell, it's actually much, much worse than that.

John 14:6 says:

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

As I pointed out in the comments on those other threads, this means that Anne Frank (unless she was lying about being Jewish and secretly believed in Jesus) is in hell right now. But, as I said, it's worse than that. When a woman conceives, Xians believe the soul enters the fertilized egg, meaning that that soul now can go to heaven or hell. Since a fertilized egg is incapable of belief in Jesus (lacks the brain function) then if that egg dies due to abortion, miscarriage, etc. that soul goes to hell. That is the fallout of this Xian doctrine.

Ah, but some Xians may claim that there's an age of accountability that allows such unfortunate souls to get a free ride to heaven. Too bad this directly contradicts the stated Bible passage above. No one attains salvation, except through belief in Jesus. If some do attain salvation without belief in Jesus, then Jesus was at best wrong, and at worst lying, and the Bible is in error. At this point, the Xian must accept that the Bible may be wrong, or must accept that miscarried fetuses go to hell (or even young children that don't yet understand the idea of belief in Jesus). Is it any wonder that I find this sort of doctrine to be barbaric, abominable, and evil?

Ignorance is a Miracle

2010-04-26T17:16:00.005-04:00

Are ya'll Xians down wit' the clowns? You should be, since they seem to think that everything is a miracle and are pushing Xianity through their raps. Unfortunately for them, "clowns," is an appropriate moniker for them and their brand of ignorance.

Yeah, I know, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel, especially since all their supposed "miracles" are pretty easy to explain. But, are they really that much different from all the other Xian apologists out there?

"The Earth is not round, we will burn you for your heresy."

"Why would I want to put that metal rod on my building? Lightning strikes are god's way of punishing people"

"Evolution is wrong, wrong, wrong, now give me my antibiotics."

Whether you're the ICP, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, or William Lane Craig the schtick is the same, "We don't know this or that, so goddidit." It's all an abject refusal to deal with reality and a glorification of ignorance, no matter how much they protest and try to wrap up their apologetics in pseudo-intellectualism.

They Just Don't Get It

2010-04-16T17:01:00.002-04:00

Apparently, the issue of pedophile priests in the Catholic church is all a front to attack the church. Apparently it's the fault of the Jews, the liberal media and intellectuals, homosexuals, or anyone and everyone else. They are pointing fingers, and the fingers are continually pointing away.

And, why not? Why should we hold the people who actually covered up these acts as accountable? Why should we hold the people who aided and abetted these sexual predators as accountable? Why should we hold those who hid the truth from us for so long accountable?

Why? Because people who do the above things, as the Catholic hierarchy has, deserve to be told to go pound sand. They are not moral people as they have repeatedly demonstrated quite capably. They are inhuman and immoral and they should be shunned and prosecuted for their crimes. They shouldn't be defended or held up as examples of goodness and light. Quite the opposite, we should continue to uncover their immoral deeds and hold those crimes up to the light of day. They have no moral standing and they should be left on the scrap heap of history with all the other immoral monsters that we rightly regard with disgust.

Theism Predicts (Part V - Conclusion)

2010-04-12T16:33:00.014-04:00

Well, this series is almost at an end as there are only three more predictions to go. So, let's get started, shall we?

12. Materialism predicted the gradual unfolding of life to be self-evident in the fossil record. Theism predicted complex and diverse life to appear abruptly in the seas in God’s fifth day of creation. – The Cambrian Explosion shows a sudden appearance of many different and completely unique fossils within a very short “geologic resolution time” in the Cambrian seas.

Ah yes, the Cambrian explosion that IDers like to go on and on about. Let's start with the obvious issues in that even if the Cambrian explosion showed what IDers claim it does, it would not help in their quest to prove Adam and Eve and all that stuff. So, it seems a bit of a pyrrhic victory at best.

Still, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we do have a good fossil record and that the Cambrian explosion is not a problem for evolution.

Once again our theist is simply making things up.

13. Materialism predicted there should be numerous transitional fossils found in the fossil record, Theism predicted sudden appearance and rapid diversity within different kinds found in the fossil record – Fossils are consistently characterized by sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record, then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils.

I've already dealt with the numerous transitional fossils claim above, so I won't rehash that, and it should be noted that this idea of sudden appearance and rapid diversity does not help the theist. Besides, is the theist arguing that god came down every couple million years and re-did his handiwork to put new animals on the ground and make the old ones extinct?

And, let's also look at this claim that, "Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils." What Chutzpah. The only people truly contesting the existence of these transitionals are the creationists! Evolutionary biologists (scientists) do not dispute these. The small disputes that do arise are over minute details that do not impact the overall theory. It would be like arguing over whether a large city has 10,345,632 or 10,345,658 inhabitants and having the creationist claim that this means that the city doesn't exist.

14. Materialism predicted animal speciation should happen on a somewhat constant basis on earth. Theism predicted man was the last species created on earth – Man himself is the last generally accepted major fossil form to have suddenly appeared in the fossil record.

OK, numerous problems here. First of all, man didn't suddenly appear. We have quite a large collection of hominid fossils. Also, it must be noted that the we have observed instances of speciation.

Also, it's simply not true that there should be speciation on a "somewhat constant basis." Speciation happens when certain conditions are met. There's no guarantee that these conditions will be met on a "somewhat constant basis." Once again we see the theist doesn't actually know what he's talking about and argues against strawmen.

Conclusion:

This series has focused on 14 different claims made by a theist, and not one has really been worthwhile. Most (if not all) make claims about materialism or theism that simply are not true. Also, the theist has repeatedly made erroneous claims in order to try and buttress his already tenuous assertions, and has shown a complete ignorance of science, how it works, and what we know from it. If it were really as easy as this theist claims to say theism predicts this or that, then he would still be playing a losing hand.

Other posts in this series...

Relative Morality, What god Should Have Done, and Historical Context

2010-04-08T16:53:00.005-04:00

When pointing out immorality in the Bible, often the rejoinder is that we have to consider the historical context and the time the book was written. Atheists are often accused of being shallow thinkers who haven't considered all the nuance of the historical period in which the book was written. Unfortunately for the Xian, this criticism falls flat on its face when examined.

For example, let's examine the Biblical treatment of women. Women are treated as property in the Bible. We might be tempted to simply shake our heads and say, "Well, that's just how it was back then," but it's not so simple. One of the Xian tenets is that absolute morality exists and is displayed by god (god being perfectly moral and all that). Yet, this defense relies on an appeal to relative morality. This is a big no-no for the Xian, as it directly contradicts the idea of an absolute morality.

To expand on that idea, the Xian is in effect saying either that the treatment of women back in Biblical days was indeed moral, that it was moral at the time but isn't now, or that it was never moral. The first in the list leads to the absurd conclusion that treating women as property is indeed a moral thing to do. I'm not going to waste much space on that idea.

The second leads to the destruction of the idea of absolute morality. If morality changes (treating women like property was good then and now is not) then it is not absolute.

The third leads to the idea that god did not display perfect morality because he instructed, in his holy book, immoral attitudes and behavior. Instead of telling the Israelis that their attitudes and culture were immoral, he sets up rules that enforce and propagate that immorality, which is, in itself, an immoral action.

To anticipate one objection to this, the Xian may claim that god knew the Israelis would not follow certain moral strictures, so he did not promote them. But, this too fails for a couple reasons. The first is that it would still be moral for god to outline his perfectly moral behavior and not simply concede that "Boys will be boys." The second reason is that the story of the OT is one long story of the Israelis rebelling against god's wishes, yet that didn't stop him from putting forth rules that he knew they wouldn't follow in those areas.

In the end, the appeal to relative morality or the culture of the times is a bad appeal and should not be taken with any weight. Instead, we should push to find out why a supposedly perfectly moral god would include immoral instructions in his holy guide to life.

Easter Reflections

2010-04-05T16:39:00.007-04:00

The day after Easter seems like a good day to think about Jesus and what his "sacrifice" (really, how can it be a sacrifice for an omni-max god to do anything, especially if he simply rose from the dead afterward?) means to us. I mean, Easter is the most holy day for Xians, since it's the day that Zombie Jesus came to life and started to figuratively eat people's brains (making them incapable of rational thinking). So, in the spirit of Easter, I have decided to ask myself the following question (supposing for the sake of argument that Jesus did exist and that Xianity is true):

What has Jesus done for me?

1. Jesus created me as a sinner that somehow deserves to go to hell by virtue of simply being born. See, all humans fall short of the glory of god, so therefore by being born we are destined for hell.
2. Jesus has not contacted me to save me from the hell that awaits me due to being born (he hasn't returned a single call.)
3. Jesus demands that I believe in things that defy logic and reason, like the idea that people can rise from the dead or that believing that an innocent person died somehow absolves me of all my moral responsibilities (see number 4 below).
4. Jesus decided that instead of bringing all humans to heaven after death or even simply not having us exist, we should be tortured for eternity unless we believe that transference of sins onto an innocent being makes sense and helps us in some way - because we should be happy that an innocent was tortured and killed, right?

In a similar vein, maybe we should also ask, what has Jesus done for humanity?

1. Jesus created the idea of hell which has been directly or indirectly the cause of untold amounts of suffering.
2. Jesus left very ambiguous words behind (the Bible) which has been the cause of untold amounts of suffering as people have fought over what the meaning of those words are.
3. Jesus has been an absentee landlord of the Earth and non-existent partner in the "relationship" that Xians claim to have, leading to all kinds of untold amounts of suffering.
4. Jesus has allowed all manners of natural evil causing untold amounts of suffering.
5. Jesus has created faulty beings that are necessarily headed for hell unless Jesus himself stops it, causing untold amounts of suffering for all eternity.

I'm sure I could list many more terrible things Jesus has done (if he existed, and some of these have happened regardless of whether he existed or not). Yet, I'm really struggling to think of one positive thing. Odd that for a religion that claims that it has absolute truth and perfect morality.

Ethiopian Brides

2010-03-29T17:57:00.004-04:00

One may even have to make Biblical marriage illegal...like what's practiced in Ethiopia. See, good Bible believing men know that in Deuteronomy, the following passage can be found (Deut. 22:28-29).

28If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;

29Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

So, what do you do if you want a woman to be your wife? Well, you simply take her, rape her, and then she has to marry you by Biblical law.

Is there anyone out there that can defend this passage with a straight face and also still claim that the Bible should be used as a moral guide?

Don't You Touch My Organs

2010-03-16T16:43:00.004-04:00

The Israeli government is reportedly looking into a law where those who agree to be organ donors will get preference if they ever need an organ in return. "Wow," you might think, what a fair idea. Yet, as it turns out, some orthodox Jews are upset because their religion forbids them from being organ donors and they don't want their place in line bumped.

Is anyone else catching the hypocrisy of a religion that says it is not OK to donate organs, but it is OK to receive other people's donated organs? How selfish and self-centered does one need to be in order to believe that god wants for you to keep your organs, even when you aren't using them anymore or if you have more than you need, but wants all those other sorry saps to give their organs up for you should you require them? I think this is just another instance of irrationality on display from religion.

Why Won't god Heal Amputees?

2010-02-24T17:44:00.004-05:00

I'm sure that everyone here is aware and familiar with the website named in the post title, right? If not, please check it out.

Now, I happen to think it's a very good question. If you listen to some Xians, however, it's a stupid question to ask (12th comment in and later). Apparently, it's so stupid that the person who asks only deserves mockery and scorn. This is not the first time that I've run into this sentiment either.

But why? I've yet to hear a response as to why it's a dumb question. This is especially true when some Xians boast of the miraculous results of their faith healings. From remission of cancer to cures for disease - even to lengthening of limbs (this blogger has routinely claimed as much as well as other outlandish claims) - god supposedly heals people. If god can make limbs grow longer, what's to stop god from making limbs regrow? But, apparently it's easier to heap scorn upon someone else for daring to ask the question than to examine one's own theology to see if there are any issue with it. One might have to face up to the possibility that one's theology doesn't make sense.

Q: What do you call a gay dinosaur?

2010-02-20T14:44:00.005-05:00

We all know that dinosaurs didn't go with Noah on the ark, right? Not so fast. As it turns out, there is a way that Noah could have had dinosaurs on the ark and they would still have died off because they simply didn't reproduce. That's right, Noah could have unintentionally selected gay dinosaurs. (Obviously it would be unintentional since god would not have wanted Noah to collect gay anything, since gays are deviants and choose to be so and so are in defiance to god and all of that silly stuff.)

It's not so far-fetched. We know that there are examples of homosexual animals that obviously choose to spite god by being gay. Isn't it possible that the gay dinosaurs infiltrated the ark so that they would be saved, and in the process killed off their own kinds? Ha ha, take that evilutionists!

(Note: the answer to the title is either Megasauras or Lickalotapus.)

Theism Predicts (Part IV)

2010-02-04T16:41:00.007-05:00

Last time, our theist tried to dab his toe into the waters of evolution, and didn't do such a good job. This time around, we find that the theist is still having trouble with reality. For instance:

9. Materialism predicted a extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Theism predicted only God created life on earth – The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial mutations whatsoever. (M. Behe; JC Sanford)

The first sentence is not even close to being true. No one is claiming that most mutations are beneficial. Most mutations are either deleterious or neutral, with some being advantageous. Mutations, however, are not "overwhelmingly detrimental." This is incorrect. And, there are not serious questions as to "whether there are any truly beneficial mutations whatsoever." The only ones making this claim are unserious creationists like Behe and Sanford who are roundly ignored, debunked, and/or chided for their unscrupulous inattention to the evidence.

What evidence? Try Lenski's work, genetic algorithms, or the many observed instance of speciation. How can they claim credibility when they deny the obvious evidence that has been produced?

10. Materialism predicted a very simple first life form which accidentally came from “a warm little pond”. Theism predicted God created life – The simplest life ever found on Earth is far more complex than any machine man has made through concerted effort. (Michael Denton PhD)

Again, the theist puts words into the "materialist's" mouth. The first life was very simple, but how it came about is probably not in "a warm little pond." We don't know exactly how life arose or in what conditions, but we do know that it is possible in quite a few conditions.

Our theist, of course, jumps to the claim that life is complex, but this doesn't at all show that the first lifeform was not simple. Of course, to go from simple to complex we need a mechanism that accomplishes the task. Luckily enough for us, we have evolution, which is more than adequate to the job and has been demonstrated to have the ability to go from simple to complex (see above and/or pick up any textbook).

Finally, that something may be more complex than anything man has made doesn't necessarily imply that it was made in turn. We could make the counter argument that we see complexity in nature that we can not hope to match, so what makes the theist think that anything could create that complexity? Both are non-starter arguments and the fact that the theist must rely on such arguments indicates that the theist is not operating from a position of strength.

11. Materialism predicted it took a very long time for life to develop on earth. Theism predicted life to appear abruptly on earth after water appeared on earth (Genesis 1:10-11) – We find evidence for complex photo-synthetic life in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth

If materialism did predict that it took a very long time for life to appear on Earth, well that is correct. The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (bya). The oldest rocks we've found are from about 4 bya. The oldest life we've found is from about 3.5 bya. IOW, life formed about 1 billion years after the formation of the Earth. Apparently that's abrupt to the theist?

Of course, that's up for some debate, and I give the theist some credit here as some recent finds may indicate older life, maybe from as early as 3.8 bya. Still, this does not support the theist's position, especially when the reference to Genesis is made. Genesis goes right out the window when discussing billions of years. Genesis refers to days and abrupt changes that simply did not happen. Genesis is disproven. Sorry Mr. Theist, but as soon as you brought Genesis into the discussion, you lost all credibility. Still, the next installment will deal with the last of the supposed predictions.

Other posts in this series...

Random

2010-02-02T16:51:00.004-05:00

I was sent this apology from a former Xian, and I liked it so much I wanted to pass it on. Please enjoy.

Also, here's a pretty good Onion-esque satire site that I know has fooled at least one gullible Xian. See, apparently we'd all be cannibals if not for Jebus, even if not everyone was a cannibal before Jebus supposedly came to Earth or before ever hearing about Jebus. You're not supposed to actually use logic and facts and stuff!

Rude? Insulting? Intolerant?

2010-01-27T17:12:00.007-05:00

Lots of Xians who post here often complain about me, saying that I'm rude and insulting, and even intolerant. Apparently, making an argument about or pointing out that their religion is inconsistent, illogical, and/or irrational is rude, insulting, and intolerant. Confused? Well, it can be difficult to determine what Xians (and other theists) find rude, insulting, and/or intolerant.

So, now you're probably wondering to yourself, "So, how can I tell when I'm being rude, insulting, or intolerant?" Well, you're in luck, as I've put together this handy guide to help you figure out what is and is not rude, insulting, and/or intolerant.

When the Xian says:
1. Gays are abhorrent, sexual deviants, etc. - Not rude, not insulting, not intolerant. You may be tempted to think that denigrating people simply because they were born with certain sexual preferences would be rude, insulting, and/or intolerant, but you'd be wrong. The only time it becomes somewhat rude, insulting, and intolerant is if you picket military funerals.

2. Women are inferior and shouldn't hold positions of power - agian, not rude, not insulting, not intolerant. You see, this is a loving position from the Xian god who decided women are simply not as good as men and should be treated as property.

3. All people are deserving of eternal torture - not rude, not insulting, not intolerant. You see, this is OK, because all people are being called bad, wicked, and worthy of the most heinous and horrible fate that could possible await them.

4. All atheists/non-theists are fools, idiots, morons, stupid, etc. - not insulting, etc. That's because this is simply true, as the Bible says. I mean, what do/did a bunch of simpletons like Einstein, Sagan, Paine, Freud, Feynmann, Russell, et al know?

5. All scientists are either lazy incompetents or devious liars advancing the atheist agenda - not insulting. Again, this is apparently true, because all of these scientists are either too stupid to realize evolution is false, or intentionally misleading the public because they are using the copious funds they receive to build super-villain, island lairs with which to enact their schemes of world domination.

More...

When the atheist says:
1. Anything - this is extremely rude, extremely insulting, extremely intolerant. Whenever an atheist says anything, the inevitable result is rude, insulting, and intolerant, simply because the atheist is speaking. In fact, the simple fact of the existence of the atheist is rude, insulting, and intolerant.

I hope this helps clear up any confusion.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Update:
The picture in the above is a nastygram written by a Xian (in crayon) because of a sticker that was on the back of the car of a dinosaur eating a Jesus fish. See here and here.

Natural Evil and the Fall

2010-01-25T17:08:00.004-05:00

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard by now that a major Earthquake has hit Haiti and done lots of damage. You've probably also heard that asshats like Pat Robertson have been claiming that it was divine retribution for some sin or another of the Haitians. Of course, other Xians are rushing to god's aid and claiming that god had nothing to do with it. The problem, you see, is that we live in a fallen world and humans (specifically Adam and Eve) are to blame.

Honestly, I find the former approach to be more intellectually honest and better thought out. How does eating an apple cause Earthquakes to happen? How did eating an apple cause the Earth to be made in such a way that tectonic plates would exist that can bump and slide against each other causing devastating earthquakes that would result in terrible human suffering? Even if it was a direct result of the actions of Adam and Eve, who came up with the idea to make this part of the punishment, a punishment that would affect people for thousands upon thousands of years after the original supposed transgression? And, who put it into effect?

Is there any possible way to claim a god that rules over all that isn't somehow responsible? No, there really isn't.

Beyond the Empirical

2010-01-13T16:31:00.004-05:00

Some (many) theists claim that god is beyond scientific/empirical scrutiny, that god, being supernatural, can not be detected by scientific/empirical means. This is usually accompanied by a smug attitude, of course, about how science/empiricism is not the only method for acquiring knowledge.

OK, so here's my very simple question:

What other method do you propose to use to detect/prove/evidence god, how do you go about using it, and how do you know it works?

It's all well and good to complain about science not showing their god, but the theist should put up or shut up and show us their methodology and see how well it works. My guess is that these theists that claim that science doesn't work will either be unable to answer the question, or will try to rely on empirical methods in the end.

Maybe god Told him to?

2010-01-08T12:05:00.003-05:00

It seems another man of the cloth (this time a baptist) is accused of raping a 13 year old (6 charges brought against him) and assault as well.

Not to make light of this, but he should have chosen better. He should have been a Muslim where Mohamed had a child bride and it wouldn't be looked down on. At least if he had been Catholic, they might have hidden him away and quietly paid off the girls he raped (allegedly I suppose). Or, maybe god is telling all these priests and others to rape girls and boys. How can we tell that that is not what is happening?

When religions boast of the power of private, personal revelation, how can religionists them justify claims that one has not had a private communique from god that raping young children is what god wants of them? I've asked this question numerous times in numerous forms, and no Xian (or theist) has ever had an answer for it. The usual pablum is that stuff like this is against the Bible, but what they don't get is that their answer is certainly open to interpretation and they can't prove that it is against the Bible. This is especially true since god has ordered rape in the past.

It seems the theist is trapped. We have no real mention of god, except through personal revelation, but if that is true, then we have no way to evaluate the veracity of one person's revelation vs. another person's version. If we toss out personal revelation, then there's no argument for god (not that it's an argument anyway, but theists seem to think it is). So, theists, which is it? Can we discern which personal revelation is bunk and which is valid, or is personal revelation useless to us in discerning the truth of the existence of god and what this god wants?

Theism Predicts (Part III)

2010-01-04T18:15:00.001-05:00

Let's jump right back in...(there's a link to previous posts at the bottom of this entry)

6. Materialism predicted the universe did not have life in mind and life was ultimately an accident of time and chance. Theism predicted this universe was purposely created by God with man in mind – Every transcendent universal constant scientists can measure is exquisitely fine-tuned for carbon-based life to exist in this universe.

Actually, for once, the commenter has almost gotten something right. What we see from science and empirical evidence is no indication, no evidence that there is any consciousness to the universe itself that would indicate that it has anything in mind or that there's some puppet master behind the scenes pulling strings. Mutations are random. Particles can and do blink into and out of existence. Quantum mechanics works based on probability instead of certainty and we even have theorems that state that this is simply the way the world works. In short, we see no evidence of purpose. To brazenly state that one sees purpose is to speak beyond what evidence we do have.

As for the fine-tuning argument, there are many issues with that. For one, the Xian can't contend fine tuning and also that humans could not have arisen in this universe without divine intervention. Secondly, the vast majority of the universe seems rather inhabitable to humans. Third, we find that life can form and thrive in a vast variety of conditions, not simply those that support human life. Fourth, we have no evidence of the constants being tuned to any degree, we simply know that they are what they are. It's quite possible that we are one of many universes that have different values, or that many of these values are emergent properties that simply must be. Also, implicit in this is that the constants must be some value plus or minus some factor, but inherent in that are still infinite different possible universes that would still meet the same restrictions of this universe. Making the leap to a fine-tuned universe that was fine-tuned by a god is an unjustified leap.

7. Materialism predicted complex life in this universe should be fairly common. Theism predicted the earth is extremely unique in this universe – Statistical analysis of the hundreds of required parameters which enable complex life to be possible on earth gives strong indication the earth is extremely unique in this universe.

And, we're back to going off the rails. Nowhere does "Materialism predict complex life in this universe should be fairly common." Once again, I have no idea where this person gets their ideas from.

What we do understand is some of the conditions necessary for life as we know it. But, we don't know quite a bit, and it's rather unjustified to go on as if we do, yet this Xian seems to feel fully justified that not only is complex life can only arise in certain specific conditions that we know of, but that the Earth is the only place in the billions and billions of galaxies that this is the case. What presumptuous rubbish.

8. Materialism predicted much of the DNA code was junk. Theism predicted we are fearfully and wonderfully made – ENCODE research into the DNA has revealed a “biological jungle deeper, denser, and more difficult to penetrate than anyone imagined.”.

Actually, it was evolutionary biologists that discovered that much of the DNA code is junk, end of story. If this Xian wants to try and argue that we don't have junk DNA, and that it's a testable prediction of his god, then I say, "Go right ahead. Please do."

This question has been empirically settled. Some creationists do try to make up data or claim that examples of functional non-coding DNA, that were already known to scientists, somehow disputes the claim of junk DNA, but they are simply making stuff up. The empirical evidence has been gathered, and the creationists lost...as they always do.

Other posts in this series.

Absolutes

2010-01-02T12:38:00.006-05:00

Quite a few time in my dealings with Xians on the intarwebs, I've been accused of dealing in black/white and absolutes (and atheists are accused of this in general). god is either evil or good, according to us atheists. These Xians wonder, why can't we look at the good stuff in the Bible and see that god is good?

How ironic they would say this, considering that the problem is a self-inflicted one for the theist, in that the theist has formed the scenario around a god possessing absolute attributes.

Omnipotence is an absolute.
Omniscience is an absolute.
Omni-benevolence is an absolute.
Perfection is an absolute.
Xians claim to hold to absolute morality.
Etc. etc. etc.

When the atheist points out the inconsistency of these absolutes, the theist must own up to the fact that the fault lies in their argument, not in the responses to that argument. Pointing out that a god that commits genocide is not perfectly good is a valid response to an argument that god is perfectly good. If theists really wish to argue for absolutes, they should not be surprised when the atheist points out their absolutes fail.

The Cure?

2009-12-22T12:01:00.004-05:00

On a recent blog post, in response to a comment I made, the author of the post included an analogy:

Who said you go to hell just because you’re human? They lied to you. You don’t go to hell simply because you are born with the disease called sin. You only go to hell if you reject the cure.

“Well gee, I got gang green on my foot and they had to amputate my whole leg and I’m mad about it!”

“Well did you take medicine for it when you first noticed it??”

“No. I don’t believe in medicines.”

Who’s responsible for the amputation, the advanced gang green or the guy who rejected the medicine after he was told it would cure him?

My response is rather long and directly follows that, but I think this is an important point that often gets thrown out there by Xians, and looks pretty reasonable until one actually looks at it a little closer.

If god is the "cure" then wouldn't we be stupid to resist? Wouldn't it be our fault for going to hell for not taking the "cure" that's staring us right in the face? Oh, if only it were so simply though, right?

This is similar to Pascal's Wager, which I won't rehash too much here, I hope. But, it must be said that the Xian has no assurance that a cure is even necessary, or that their beliefs constitute the true cure if one is indeed necessary. There are tons of purported cures out there for the all too human fear of death, and picking one out of a hat has just as much a chance of being right as being born into those beliefs.

But, what the analogy really misses is why the victim is suffering in the first place. How did the patient get gang green? If someone somehow gave the patient this condition, would we not find fault with that person? If that person then went out and found the cure and brought it back, would we simply absolve them of all their responsibility in bringing about this sequence of events? Wouldn't we hold that it was their moral duty to try and correct their mistake?

In this instance, is it not god that created humans as fallible beings with sinful natures? It would only be god's moral responsibility to fix that by giving us a cure, and one without strings, like demanding obedience from us and that we conform to specific beliefs. Sorry, but this is an analogy fail, because it glosses over the important parts of the equation, namely god's involvement in the condition. That's part of the problem with a so-called perfect, omni-max god, the buck always stops with him.

How To Helpfuls

2009-12-18T17:57:00.005-05:00

Let's say you're a Xian who really wants to convert heathens like me, but you just don't know how. Well, you're in luck, because the helpful people at wikiHow have a guide just for you. Make sure you are adequately prepared with tidbits like these:

Conversion is an act of love. A gift.

It's a gift all right to be convinced that you deserve to be tortured in hell for eternity out of love.

...increase your friendship before attempting to influence their religious beliefs.

Because emotional blackmail is a great way to get people to convert.

Pray to God.

Because that's always helpful, right?

It's not all dumb though. There are some good points made, like this one:

Do your homework. If you are a Christian, and you believe that the Bible is the direct word of God, then certainly you have read most of the Bible, especially the Gospels, right? If not, you may find the person you are trying to convert is better versed in the Bible than you.

This is actually good advice.

Similarly the rest of the piece has its ups and downs, but overall it's pretty humorous I think.

And, of course, for those new converts who just don't know how to believe in god, there's a guide for you too! Of course, it can be summed up pretty quickly by saying simply shut off your reasoning faculties and simply believe.

Respect

2009-12-16T16:54:00.007-05:00

Must we respect people's religious beliefs?

We often hear theists complain that atheists don't properly respect their beliefs, that we don't give them the proper deference. Because the theist holds deep beliefs, about serious, religious stuff dealing with the nature of the supernatural, these beliefs are to be held sacrosanct, by all. One is not allowed to question those beliefs, or else one is intolerant. One must simply accept those beliefs as valid and rational and act as if those beliefs are very important and worthy ones to have. (The theist, of course, is under no obligation to reciprocate or treat theists of other religions with the same deference.)

Well, sorry but "Homey don't play that." People should be respected. Rights should be respected. People have the right to believe as they do and I respect that (just don't try to foist it on me or complain if I also speak out). Beliefs themselves, however, are not automatically worthy of respect. Beliefs must be rational and defensible before they are worthy of respect. A belief in magic crystals is not worthy of respect when (because) there is no accompanying evidence for it. Same goes for a belief that one is physically eating the flesh of her god when taking communion. If a theist wants their beliefs to be respected, then that theist should present respectable beliefs. I am, however, under no obligation, morally or in terms of rights, to treat all beliefs as if they are worthy of respect.

In fact, I would go further than that. I am under an obligation to speak out when one presents beliefs that are irrational, unsupported, and are detrimental to society. This is why I speak out against religion.

Does Belief Hurt America?

2009-12-13T16:32:00.004-05:00

Here's an interesting article that goes over some research done that measured national success vs. the degree of secularity. The findings show that the most secular states end up performing the best in area of societal and economic stability.

Paul is quick to point out that his study reveals correlation, not causation. Which came first — prosperity or secularity — is unclear, but Paul ventures a guess. While it's possible that good governance and socioeconomic health are byproducts of a secular society, more likely, he speculates, people are inclined to drop their attachment to religion once they feel distanced from the insecurities and burdens of life.

This is probably true. How often do we see religious apologists trying to prey upon the downtrodden, the old, the sick, etc. It's because religion very often targets those who are most vulnerable. When people aren't vulnerable, they are less likely to be religious, which is why we see such a significant shift away from religion in developed countries.

This study also shows that religion need not be the backbone for a moral society. In fact, the US, which is more religious than the other countries studied ended up on the tail end of just about all of the moral and social indicators used. And, we don't see the implosion of those secular states which are leading the way. So, for those who believe in belief (as Dennett puts it) have one more data point to have to explain away.

Theism Predicts (Part II)

2009-12-11T13:58:00.003-05:00

Let's just jump right in (for the previous post, the link is at the bottom).

3. Materialism predicted space has always existed, Theism predicted space had a creation (Psalm 89:12) – Space was created in the Big Bang. -

OK, so let's break this down. Different religions have all had different ideas about the formation of the Earth, where some believe that space was always around and other didn't. This particular theist has included Psalm 89:12 as evidence that he believes god created space. Um, let's look at that psalm, shall we?

89:12 The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name.

Well, it doesn't really indicate that god created space. Nor, coincidentally, does Genesis, which this theist is really pushing for. The reality though is that once again materialistic science (not religion) figured out that space was a result of the big bang, and it is not a problem for a material universe to be composed of "space." Once again the apologist is barking up the wrong tree.

4. Materialism predicted at the base of physical reality would be a solid indestructible material particle which rigidly obeyed the rules of time and space, Theism predicted the basis of this reality was created by a infinitely powerful and transcendent Being who is not limited by time and space – Quantum mechanics reveals a wave/particle duality for the basis of our reality which blatantly defies our concepts of time and space. -

This one is just plain bizarre (as if the others aren't?) Quantum mechanics reveals a wave/particle duality to the components of our universe, but it doesn't defy our concepts of time and space. I don't know where he's getting this. To make matters worse, how is this in any way tied to the idea of an infinitely powerful and transcendent Being?" Here, the apologist is simply reaching for anything that he thinks he can use to say "goddidit."

5. Materialism predicted the rate at which time passed was constant everywhere in the universe, Theism predicted God is eternal and is outside of time – Special Relativity has shown that time, as we understand it, is relative and comes to a complete stop at the speed of light. (Psalm 90:4)-

Actually, that time was not relative was pretty well accepted by all, both theists and materialists alike until Einstein came along. Then, when Einstein's ideas were accepted, materialists accepted the findings and moved on, while we still have creationists that try to argue that time is not relative.

Still, I fail to see how relativity relates to a god that is supposedly outside of space and time. Is the apologist arguing that god travels around at the speed of light and so doesn't experience the flow of time? This would be at odds with most conceptions of the Xian god where god is simply not a part of the timeline of the universe, i.e. that god exists separate from time. god is timeless, which is different from god moving around at the speed of light.

The impression that one is left with is that the apologist doesn't really understand the science behind what he's saying and is really flailing around for something, anything that he thinks he can apply to his cherished beliefs.

Other posts in this series.

Living With Sin

2009-12-09T21:30:00.004-05:00

So, apparently god is really, really perfect and stuff, and that means that god can not live with sin, so that's why he sends people to hell. You see, it's not his fault that he's perfect and can't live with sin, and it's not his choice, it's just the way things are. So what if he created beings that by design can't live up to perfection and therefore can't not sin? He's perfect after all.

But, seriously, this brings to mind a couple issues. First, god is supposedly omnipresent, so the existence of hell kind of calls that into question if it is supposedly a place where sinners go and god can't be around sin. Also, sin supposedly exists right here on Earth, and god would be around it if he were omnipresent, so I guess something's gotta give. I'll leave it up to the apologists to decide which part of their story they want to jettison (although I predict that most apologists will cling to the notion that nothing is amiss in their idea).

Secondly, how can it not be god's choice that the system is set up so that people will sin and then go to hell because god can't be with them? Why set up the universe in that way? This makes god out to be either extremely cruel and vindictive or extremely stupid. Even a non-omniscient being should be smart enough to see the problem with this arrangement, yet a perfect god didn't? It's just another story from Xianity that strains credulity.

god Loves the Raped Children

2009-12-06T14:46:00.006-05:00

One of the Xian commenters here, Tracy, has her own blog (linked to her name) where she recently had a post with the following passage:

There's nothing I wouldn't do for my children; and to think that God calls me His child...

So, why do children starve to death? Why do children get beaten and raped, especially by those who claim to be this same god's emissaries here on Earth as catholic priests claim? Why are children mistreated in any way by others while god sits there and watches? In fact, if we are all god's children, why does he not help all of us?

god, being omniscient surely knows that children are being made to suffer on this world. god, being omnipotent surely has the ability to do something about it. Yet, it's demonstrable that children still suffer on this world. Since god is also supposedly omnipresent, doesn't that indicate that god is there, watching these children suffer and doing nothing to stop it? How cruel is that. How uncaring, indifferent, vile, and evil. Is there any defense for this? Most of us would do all we could to help children that are not even our own, yet god sits there and watches as his children are brutalized, beaten, raped, starve, etc. and has the power to stop it, yet he watches it go on and does nothing. This is not a god that loves us, and people should stop making excuses for such a god if he does exist.

Theism Predicts (Introduction)

2009-12-04T16:50:00.014-05:00

Over at Daylight Atheism, a commenter named "Ric" asked if Ebonmuse would take a crack at a list predictions written by a creationist and have a go at answer them. I told Ric that I would take a stab, and this post is the beginning of that, but first, some background is in order.

The list in question comes from William Dembski's old blog (he turned the asylum over to the lunatics some time ago) Uncommon Descent. As someone who used to frequent a site called
After the Bar Closes quite a bit, I can tell you that there are whole threads devoted to showing the bad argumentation displayed by the denizens of UD. In fact, the Uncommonly Dense Threads have amassed almost 1600 pages of comments critical of UD and the bad reasoning, arguments, and general idiocy posted there, including that which comes from the head honchos that write there. (For instance, one poster believes that one can not simulate mutation and selection in a population unless one also mutates the OS of the computer running the sim, and another swears that Dawkins' Methinks it's a Weasel program somehow cheats even though it's been pointed out multiple times that he's wrong.)

Anyway, on to the list. There's 14 listed "predictions" that are made by theism and materialism according to a commenter named Bornagain77 (BA77). Yet, right off the bat there's a problem. Most of what BA77 says is predicted by Materialism is a strawman representation, and none of what he claims is predicted by "theism" is actually predicted by simple belief in a god, which is what theism boils down to. What he really wants to say is that his brand of literal creationism predicts these things, but he's still wrong as we shall see.

1.Materialism predicted an eternal universe, Theism predicted a created universe. – Big Bang points to a creation event.

The first one is a common error that creationists make that centers around conflation and misunderstanding the physics behind the big bang. What most creationists fail to understand is that ideas like Olber's paradox, for example, show that an eternal static state universe does not exist and has not ever existed. The big bang model does away with this idea by showing that there has been a definite change in state of the universe at some point that we label time t=0 where our current idea of the universe came to be. This does not imply that the universe is not eternal or that it is, and materialism doesn't rely on either of these being the case.

To make matters worse, the big bang marks the beginning of time for our universe. Time as we know it did not exist before the big bang, so speaking of time before time started is rather useless. It's rather odd to speak of an eternal universe that existed before time existed.

Now, what does "theism" predict? In BA77's case, theism predicts a creation event it is true. We can not, however, claim that creation has happened. And, the creation event being "predicted" here is that of the story of Genesis, which has been shown to be wrong (i.e. time scales, sequence of events, etc.)

2. Materialism predicted time had an infinite past, Theism predicted time had a creation – Time was created in the Big Bang.

Similar to the above, this is not predicted by materialism as we know from the big bang that time as we measure it did not exist before that event. In fact, it is materialistic science that showed us that the big bang happened, not Biblical creationism. In fact, there's no mention of god creating time in the Bible in the Genesis account at all.* If we truly went by the Genesis account, we wouldn't be able to say one way or the other whether god created time or it just was. Again, we see a straw man depiction of materialism coupled with an incorrect summation of the creationist's position. Hind sight is 20/20 of course.

This post is getting rather long, so subsequent posts will handle the rest of the 14 "predictions" on the list.

*Edit: Some theists claim that "In the beginning" means that time began then, but the Genesis account need not mean that. It could simply mean the beginning of the universe, story, Earth, whatever, independent of time. It also doesn't say that god made this beginning happen or that god created the initial conditions of "in the beginning."

No You Can Not Haz Communion

2009-12-02T18:14:00.004-05:00

The catholic church is very serious about abortion. They're also very serious about their influence in the politics of this nation. They are so serious that they refuse to allow politicians that don't vote against abortion rights to be cannibals in their churches. This happened in 2004 with John Kerry and has happened again recently with Patrick Kennedy.

So, looking past the absurd notion that the catholic church has any room to preach morality to anyone, what is this really about? It's about the catholic church trying to usurp undue influence over the political process and enforce their sense of "morality" on the rest of the public through unreasonable means. Politicians are there to represent the people, not to be bullied by stuffed up men in silly robes with delusions that they speak for god.

Xian Side Hugs

2009-11-30T17:59:00.004-05:00

So, apparently, this video is not for real. It's pretty funny, I gotta admit.

Too bad that most people couldn't actually tell it was a joke. Poe's Law was definitely in action which is actually the funniest thing about this.

It got me to thinking though about the whole abstinence before marriage idea. Why are people who wait until marriage always convinced that it somehow makes it better? Um, how would they even know? I don't know if it's better or not, but it doesn't make sense that it would be. Sex is something that requires practice (lots of it preferably). How many of you really knew what you were doing the first time? Why would we think that throwing together 2 people who both don't know what they are doing is somehow better simply because they've gone through some ceremony that really doesn't change anything except for their tax and legal status?

Perfect Justice

2009-11-23T16:35:00.012-05:00

Many Xians claim that god is the author of justice, and as such gives us perfect justice, both in this world and the next. For the purposes of this post, we can simplify the idea of justice to getting what one deserves. I've already dealt with the inherent contradiction between getting what one deserves and god handing out grace from the Xian perspective, but today I'd like to focus on something else. Does Xian philosophy really provide perfect justice (minus the grace part of course)? Let's look at a hypothetical example.

Let's suppose a tyrant. Let's let our tyrant be evil, vicious, cruel, and vindictive (no I'm not talking about Yahweh, but I could be I suppose). Let's further say that this tyrant is responsible for many deaths, much suffering, has tortured others, etc. This is a really bad, bad person. Is it just (perfect or otherwise) for this person to be tortured in hell for eternity? Of course not. No matter how bad this person was in life, that was finite and infinite torture for finite crimes doesn't make sense from a justice standpoint.

But, let's strengthen the argument. Let's say that the tyrant receives punishment that fits the extent of his crimes. For every murder he caused, he gets to feel what it felt like. He gets to feel all the pain and suffering that he caused, until he has felt it all when the punishment stops. Is this perfect justice? Well, it's vengeance for sure, but it's a bit more equitable than an eternity in hell. And, I'm sure that most Xians would thirst for this type of retributive vengeance, but it's still not perfect justice.

So, why is it not perfect? It's not perfect because the tyrant's actions allowed others to unjustly feel this pain and torment to begin with. Did the tyrant's victims get what they deserve in this life? When their lives were cut short, they lost the ability to fully live out their lives and attain their own balance sheets for their bout with finite vengeance after death. By god allowing this state of affairs, perfect justice can not be attained. In this sense, Xianity can not offer the hope for perfect justice at all, and that's even after using an argument that most Xians don't even subscribe to, which is the argument that after-death punishment would fit the severity and scope of the crimes done.

If Atheists Ruled the World

2009-11-21T15:14:00.003-05:00

This is simply too funny. Please watch this video.

Defending Genocide (Part V) - Nuremberg Defense

2009-11-19T18:18:00.003-05:00

You all may remember our apologist who now wonders whether the Israelis could know these commands came from god. Well, really they couldn't, but it doesn't really matter. Even if the commands did come from god, who cares? They were immoral commands and should not have been carried out.

More interesting to me is the next section where the apologist asks whether the Israelis were simply justifying their actions. Let's take a look:

When the Israelites destroyed a population, they were acting as God's tools, not taking matters into their own hands. God made it clear to them that he was the one behind their victories (Jdg 7:2-3, Josh 5:13-14). In many cases, the nations were defeated by miracles of God (Josh 6, 10:8-14), and in all cases the Israelites were victorious only because they were following God, who gave them the victory (Josh 10:42).

Why am I reminded of the Nuremberg Defense? Hmmm, maybe because that's what this basically boils down to. This is just a long-winded way of saying that the Israelis were 'only following orders.' Yet, we rightly concluded that that defense shouldn't have worked with the Nazis and it doesn't work here. Sorry, but 'just following orders' doesn't absolve the Israelis from their crimes of aggression and genocide.

Other posts in this series...

Who is to Blame?

2009-11-16T17:45:00.005-05:00

How often have any of you heard this refrain:

"Blame people for bad acts, not Xianity..."

or this:

"People will use Xianity to prop up their evil deeds, but they'd be just as evil without it..."

It's an old refrain. People are bad/sinful/wicked/evil, and if we get rid of religion, they'll just find some other reason to be bad/sinful/wicked/evil. So, why focus our efforts on stopping religion?

But, is this really so? Certain behaviors and thoughts are learned, and learning that it is OK to be bigoted or sexist is not OK. Why should we not point out when a teaching fosters and encourages these types of thoughts or deeds? If someone grows up being taught that women are meant to be subservient to men and then acts on it thinking nothing is wrong, should we really lay all the blame on the man and not on the teaching that lead to his actions?

No, we should point out those teachings that are wrong and we should seek to correct them and/or end them. It's not enough to simply shrug our shoulders and say, "People are evil, what can you do?" We should raise up and proclaim quite loudly how immoral most religious teachings are and advocate that people should throw off the shackles of these antiquated religions and strive to become the moral people that they should be. It's a much better idea that giving up. In fact, that's just what apologists hope we will do so that they can continue to propagate their ideas without resistance and enjoy their unearned and undeserved place in culture. We must not let them have it without a fight.

Doubting Thomas

2009-11-13T12:14:00.004-05:00

I keep hearing that Xianity is all about evidence, that Xians ask for evidence and receive it, and that god's cool with that. You know, he thinks we should be inquisitive and all that, and he'll provide evidence for us if we really want to see it. For an example of this, Xians often point to the story of Thomas. See, he doubts that Jesus has really come back from the dead, so Jesus literally has him touch the wounds that were inflicted by the crucifixion.

Wow, who could argue with that, right?

Except, there's still one small detail that usually gets left out of the story (and they say that atheists cherry pick from the Bible...) If you read just one more verse, you find this:

20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

Notice the part that I took the liberty of bolding. Jesus shows Thomas the marks, and the rebukes him for needing evidence. He says that those who simply believe without requiring evidence are blessed, which doesn't include Thomas. This isn't Jesus saying that Xians should seek evidence, but that they should simply believe on faith. Instead of supporting the argument that Xianity is about evidence, it undermines it.

By Whose Standards?

2009-11-10T16:37:00.005-05:00

When evil acts of god are brought up in debate with a Xian (like genocide, rape, etc) one apologetic that is frequently heard is that we can't judge god by our standards, because god is well above us. IOW, god should go by his own standard.

Really? Well, there's a few problems with that.

It's first and foremost an appeal to relative morality. We have our moral system here, where we generally try not to steal, kill, rape, etc. while god is able to do those things at will...simply because he is god. Also, Xians believe that god will judge us by a standard of perfection, however, yet the actions of god are decidedly less than perfect, so he is also advocating having different standards - one for him, one for the rest of us.

But, really the thing that I see as the worst aspect of this is that god is held to a lower standard, yet god is supposedly perfect. This is like taking the A+ student and asking them only to write a paper with their name on it, while the student that is struggling in the class is required to write a paper that would pass a Ph.D. dissertation. Why would we hold a supposedly perfect being to a lower standard than beings that are decidedly less than perfect? It makes no sense. If anything, god should be the exemplar of morality and perfection, instead of someone we have to make excuses for and hold to lower standards.

Things like genocide and rape and murder shouldn't come from such a being and instead of making excuses for this being when the do, we should rightly be outraged by the behavior of a being that should know better. If a child does something wrong, we know that the child may not know better, but god doesn't have that excuse. If a person errs and messes up, we might take pity or think of leniency because we all make mistakes, but god does not have that excuse. So, why are apologists excusing god's actions?

Defending Genocide (Part IV) - Should the Israelites have Followed god?

2009-11-08T16:56:00.003-05:00

Our apologist wonders whether the Israelites should have slaughtered all those people, regardless of what god said. Let's see what (s)he thinks?

The Israelites personally knew God to be just, righteous and wise.

Apart from the wholesale slaughter of others I hope?

Aside from knowing God through prayer and individual devotions, many generations of Israelites personally witnessed God's miracles. The generation that fought against the Midianites was the generation that had miraculously escaped from Egypt; the generation that fought the wars in the book of Joshua was only one generation later, and saw the parting of the Jordan River (Josh 3:7-17). Both generations experienced God's provision for them during the Exodus (Dt 29:5; manna was provided until the time of Joshua - Josh 5:12).

Might does not make right. Just because god is powerful enough to perform miracles doesn't mean that god is always morally right.

Finally, Moses explicitly taught the Israelites that God "is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he" (Dt 32:4).

Ah yes, the circular reasoning that god is just because he says so - not very compelling.

These things gave them reason to trust God even when he commanded them to do something they might otherwise refuse to do.

Sorry, but this just doesn't hold. It doesn't matter who is telling someone to commit genocide, you don't do it. Even if that someone is an omni-max deity. Surely god could come up with a better option than making you complicit in wholesale slaughter.

Furthermore, they understood that God has the authority to destroy a city, and that the best thing for them to do was to trust someone whose judgment and wisdom are far superior to their own.

No, god does not have this authority. No one does. The apologist here is blankly stating that god has the authority to do whatever god wants, regardless of the moral implications of it. But, once again, might does not make right, so by what authority would god have to perform immoral actions? If the action becomes moral simply because god says so, then morality is relative. If what is right is right regardless, then god is not the author of morality, and his actions here are immoral.

Some have argued that the Israelites should have decided that God's command was wrong and refused to carry it out.

Yes, it appears that they should have.

It is worth noting that God is unchanging (Mal 3:6), so the Israelites would have known that the just and righteous God they knew before was still just and righteous when he issued the command.

Considering that Malachi is the last book in the OT, I don't see how the Israelites would have known this passage before it was written or occurred. Still, simply because god says he's right doesn't mean he is.

However, let us suppose for the sake of argument that God could have issued an unjust command; for instance, ordering the Israelites to be sadistic by torturing babies and enjoying their pain. Sadism is inherently evil; there is no possible situation in which it could be right to take pleasure in torturing others. (The Israelites slew people with swords, which would have been one of the quickest ways at the time to kill someone, and were never told to enjoy killing; thus God's commanded genocide was not sadism.) Therefore the Israelites would have been justified in refusing to practice sadism.

This is, perhaps, the most sensible thing in here. Yes, the Israelites should refuse to engage in sadism. So, why does the author think they should not have refused to slaughter people indiscriminately? The mind boggles, and I can only think that this is a case of special pleading.

Since the Israelites had good reason to believe in God's moral perfection, omniscience and omnipotence, the best choice for them would be to trust that God had a better understanding than they of the situation itself and the moral rules governing it.

And, here the author leans on the "god works in mysterious ways" canard. Well, the last passages were all about how the Israelites could know that god was correct in the order, and now the author is admitting that they couldn't know and simply had to trust. Which, BTW, would be a case of begging the question.

The only way for them to be justified in not obeying God's command would be if the command were inherently evil and impossible to justify (though it must be cautioned that humans with their imperfect understanding could incorrectly decide a command was inherently evil).

So, genocide is apparently not inherently evil? It's about as close as can be, one would think, and I've seen no justification for it so far, especially since the author is now admitting that they had to take it on faith that god was correct in ordering these genocides. And, to top it off, the author then claims that we are so imperfect that we could incorrectly decide that something is immoral when it isn't...so I guess sadism is back on the table.

So, this has seriously devolved into a mishmash of begging the question, circular logic, and relying on simply having faith that god was correct.

For more in this series...

Allah at the Gates

2009-11-05T17:25:00.004-05:00

When a Xian dies and goes to heaven to stand in front of....Allah, what will she say?

Allah may say, "You had all the evidence you needed to choose to believe in me, so I'm banishing you to hell for your choice to not believe. Suffer eternally for your bad choices, you vile infidel."

Would the Xians here find this to be fair, just, etc? Would you all shrug your shoulders and say, "Oh well, I chose to believe wrong and I guess I deserve hell for it?"

It's a Miracle!

2009-11-03T16:50:00.005-05:00

If Xian miracles are supposed to compel me to believe in Yahweh, why should I (and presumably Xians) not believe in Allah due to this purported miracle?

Threats and a Dialog

2009-10-31T12:12:00.006-04:00

A dialog:

Consumer (C)
Boat Vendor (BV)

BV: (Pointing to an empty space) Buy this boat.
C: What boat? There's no boat to be found.
BV: Well, I don't actually have anything to show you, but I have a book that was written long ago about people who saw the boat and think it's great.
C: Which people? How do you know they are telling the truth, how do you know the report is accurate?
BV: It just is. You should buy this boat, because if you don't, you'll die a horrible death.
C: So, all you have for evidence is a book of questionable authenticity?
BV: Well, you've just gotta believe me that this boat exists. Now, give me some money and you can have it.
C: How do I even know this boat is going to work as planned? Maybe it has holes in it, maybe it'll sink.
BV: It won't sink, it's made of flat steel planks.
C: But, flat steel planks don't float.
BV: If you believe hard enough they will.
C: So, I'm supposed to believe in this boat that you have no evidence for, that you describe as something that won't work, and I'm supposed to buy this from you with no assurance that it'll work or that it actually exists.
BV: If you don't, you'll die a horrible death.
C: I think I'll pass.

Later that night, BV blows up the local dam and floods the town killing C.

Did C ask for the dam to be blown up and be drowned? Did C ask to die horribly by not buying the boat? Isn't this extortion? Would anyone agree that BV's actions here are moral, just, or good? Then, why would we use those descriptors when god essentially takes BV's place in the story.

Defending Genocide (Part III) - What about the Children?

2009-10-29T16:15:00.006-04:00

So, what about the children? When the Israelites went a-slaughterin', they also killed all the children. What does our apologist have to say?

Small children did not share the guilt of their parents.

No, but god had them share the same fate anyway.

The Bible describes small children as not knowing right from wrong (Is 7:15-16) [ed. note, this passage is a reference to Immanuel, not children in general], and in some cases, this meant that they were spared the earthly punishment their elders received.

Which is pure conjecture. There's nothing about an age of accountability in the Bible.

The Bible also clearly teaches that one person is not held guilty for another's sin (Ezek 18). Therefore, the children who were killed would not face the same punishment in the afterlife as their parents.

O Rly?

Tell that to all the descendants of Adam and Eve (all of us) who are held as sinful by nature because of their actions. And, let's not forget Ex. 20:5 and 34:7, Deut. 5:9, 23:2, and 28:18, Num. 14:18, 1 Sam. 3:12-13, 2 Sam. 12:14-15, etc.

Why were the children killed, if they weren't guilty? Apparently, they were considered as morally neutral, since they weren't yet old enough to be held accountable or to have done much right or wrong. While not as corrupt as their parents, they were part of the society that was judged, and shared its earthly (though not its eternal) fate.

Again, there's no support for an age of accountability in the Bible.

Couldn't the children have died painlessly?

One would think so...I'm betting the answer from our "loving" god is, "No."

Why didn't God translate the children into heaven instead of having them die by the sword? Since the children lived in a world affected by sin, they faced its earthly consequences (Rom 5:12-14).

And, here is where we blame the victims. The Earthly consequences that the children had to face (brutal death) were imposed by god himself. So, the argument here is that god was fine in doing this because he set up the world to require this brutal death and then carried it out. And, somehow it's the humans caught in his sadism that are to blame?

Only a few righteous people were translated into heaven, namely Enoch (Gen 5:24, Heb 11:5) and Elijah (2 Ki 2:11). As noted above, since the children had not shown themselves to be righteous, they were not spared the common fate of death.

Sorry to all the newborns, but you haven't acted like a saint yet. Oh, so sorry.

It's worth noting that being killed with a sword (perhaps beheaded) was at the time one of the quickest ways for the children to die (as opposed to suffocation/strangulation, starvation, disease or being torn apart by wild animals - see Ex 23:28-29).

Oh, so that makes it OK?

And, this raises quite a few problems. If killing children is good because they get to go to heaven, then why is abortion or infanticide considered bad? Why would the author claim that god was enraged at child sacrifice if it sent those children to heaven? Why would god be enraged by them killing children if he was going to kill them anyway (possible answer is that he was mad that the humans killed the children before he had a chance to).

And, how is that fair, equitable, or just to kill children before they have a chance to sin? For all of us who have grown beyond the age of accountability, we all have sinned and now need salvation. Children that die early get to go straight to heaven without the chance of sinning and ending up eternally tormented in hell.

Finally, does this excuse god's actions? Either it does, but then god is convicted on other accounts (unfairly sending others to hell) or it does not. I actually lean to the latter, because he still ordered the Israelis to put children to the sword. He couldn't do it himself, no he had to have others do his dirty work, using pain and violence when he could have snapped his fingers and avoided pain, evil, and violence. god is still not absolved of his crimes against humanity.

Other posts in this series...

Howard Unruh - Murderer and Xian

2009-10-27T17:35:00.007-04:00

Last week, Howard Unruh died at the ripe old age of 88 after 60 years of incarceration. For those who don't know who Mr. Unruh was, he went on a shooting spree in 1949 that killed 13 people in Camden, NJ. He had been in WWII and then came home to live with his mother. He often went with her to St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church and frequently read his Bible according to people who knew him. Apparently, he made a list of people he wanted to target, people that he felt were persecuting and belittling him, "that they were thinking of him as a homosexual." After the shootings, a search of his room turned up "700 cartridges, a book called the Shooter's Bible (he had used the building's basement for target practice) and a New Testament." [emphasis mine]

Yup, you can't be moral without god.

(note: All quotes taken from The Globe and Mail obituary report of Oct. 21.)

Armstrong and the Not-god

2009-10-23T17:19:00.005-04:00

I recently happened to read an interview with Karen Armstrong that brought up some questions that I've had in the past, but not asked. For anyone who doesn't know Ms. Armstrong, she's "perhaps the world's best-known living writer on religion." So, what does she say? She says things like this:

Then came Newton. Newton is unable to think mythically. He claimed that the intricacy of the solar system required the existence of an intelligent being as creator that provided scientific proof for the God of the Bible. He said this being is clearly omniscient, omnipotent, massively powerful and obviously very well versed in mechanics and geometry.

Hitherto, people had said the natural world can't lead us to God. It can make us inspired. It can make us look and wonder. But it can't give us detailed information about God.

That's interesting, considering many believers claim that things like fine tuning and the world around us somehow constitute evidence for god. Or, take this:

You cannot think of God as a creator in a literal way: whoops-here's-a-robin kind of thing. God is not another being. So to ask, “Is there a God who created the world?” is a misnomer.

God is not a sort of thing. We can't say there's a God, as though he's an item in a species. God is the all. God is being itself, St. Thomas Aquinas says. Ipsum esse subsistens.

It's a misnomer to ask if there's a god who created the world? Huh?

Ms. Armstrong also tends to argue that the "New Atheists" are totally wrong, because no one actually believes in a real god that created the world, etc. etc. etc., and arguing against that is arguing against what Xians don't believe. Her god is some mystical force or something that simply is and doesn't really do anything. So, my question is this - does this describe what the Xian commenters here actually think about their god?

You can't feel God any more than you can think God.

I don't know many Xians that would say that.

Coming Together for Bigotry

2009-10-21T19:39:00.002-04:00

I've said many times that we always see splintering of religious sects into more sects as people's ideas of god come into conflict and there's no way of telling who is right and who is wrong. Well, we may be seeing a case (perhaps the first) of two religions coming together.

It seems that the Catholic church has offered a chance for the Anglicans to come back to them, but not just any Anglicans:

[The pope's] plan announced Tuesday to welcome disaffected Anglicans means he will help an estimated half-million members of Christianity's third-largest sect disappear – Anglicans who have stuck to the flanks of their church like the boils of Job, rejecting its stance on issues like ordaining women priests and blessing gay unions but ecclesiastically having nowhere else to call home.

IOW, they've decided to set their differences aside so that they can unite in bigotry against women and gays!

Defending Genocide (Part II)

2009-10-19T12:27:00.009-04:00

In the last installment I tackled the idea that the genocide of god was done as punishment for things like child sacrifice. The real reason for it was punishment for disbelief or belief in the wrong god. One can't very well obey god (which is really what god seems to be after) if one doens't believe in him.

So, let's continue where we left off. The next section talks about whether there were innocent adults.

Sadly, these were few and far between. If people grow up in a culture that accepts things like murder and rape, very few will listen to their conscience and go against what everyone else says. Children learn wrong things from their parents and the surrounding culture; as they mature, they become part of the culture and perpetuate it by participating in it and passing on its teachings to their children.

Yet, we know that societies don't tend to function that way. Some societies are more permissive than others, but societies that are free-for-alls of murder and rape don't survive. Why? Because they kill themselves off. It's why humans (and our animal cousins) are still around as social animals. And, worse yet, it's hard to make generalizations like this stick. Does the author really think that this would be the case, especially after the next paragraph where this person implies that righteous people do exist in societies that god doesn't agree with?

However, those who were righteous were spared from the destruction. In the destruction of Jericho, Rahab and her family were spared because she feared God and chose to help the Israelites (Josh 2:1-21, 6:22-25). Before the Amalekites were destroyed, their righteous neighbors were warned to move away (1 Sam 15:5-6). God promised not to destroy Sodom if there were but ten righteous people in the city (Gen 18:22-32), and in a later judgment against Jerusalem, promised to forgive the city if one righteous person was found in it (Jer 5:1).

OK, so let's talk about Rahab (the prostitute), shall we? In the passages cited, it's obvious that she's doing this because she's afraid. We can't really make any moral judgements on her because she's not given us a moral position. She's simply being pragmatic and trying to save her family. In fact, she has to lie in order to defend the spies, an immoral thing to do according to an absolute moral standard. All she's really done is helped god in his quest for blood, which apparently is "righteous" and worth being spared. Of course, she's left homeless and penniless, but she's alive with her family, right?

Do we want to talk about Kenites? I'm sure they were fully righteous people, right? I'm sure none of their adults were guilty of not being righteous, but god spares them because he has a personal grudge against Amalek's tribe. This isn't about righteous punishment (an idea that could be argued to be an oxymoron) but about settling a grudge.

Should we talk about Sodom and Gomorrah? god had to be convinced not to wipe out the "righteous" people by Abraham. Instead of showing god's mercy or justice, it's an example of a human showing god how to be (more) moral and just. And, for Jerusalem, he goes ahead and finds everyone guilty anyway.

But, there's a larger thing going on here, and that is a circular reasoning. god decides who is righteous and they are righteous because god decided they are. So, if god wipes you out, then that means you weren't righteous, and you're righteous if god doesn't wipe you out. It's OK for god to commit genocide because he gets to decide whether it's OK or not, and it has nothing at all to do with morality. We can look at the story of Lot again to see this in action. Lot offers up his daughters to the men outside his door, which can't be defended as moral (except to a society that thinks of women as property). Yet, Lot is supposedly righteous according to god. Of course the angels didn't search the whole city to find if anyone else would have helped them (nor did the spies in the case of Rahab - apparently just finding one person that is willing to help you means that you've found all the people that would be willing) but because god said so, it somehow becomes right, just, and good. Well, sorry, but that doesn't cut it.

Alpha Course Dissected

2009-10-16T10:20:00.003-04:00

I've been reading a series of posts on the Alpha Course, which seems to be Britain's analog to the Way of the Master crap that Ray Comfort puts out. So far, I'm up to week seven, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the write-ups of the courses and the interactions. So, I thought I would pass it along. I would recommend that both atheists and theists take a look at this, as many of the unanswered atheist arguments spring up here, and the theists inevitably fail to provide anything approaching a compelling answer.

Defending Genocide (Part I)

2009-10-12T17:32:00.007-04:00

About a month ago, Ebonmuse had a great post talking about how Xians invariably have to try and defend genocide in defending their god. In it, Ebonmuse touched on three different sites that try to do just that, but he didn't go into depth on each one. I did look at those sites, however, and what he presented was only the tip of the iceberg. So, I endeavored to give these sites a more detailed fisking. Now that my computer is not blown up anymore, I can get into it, so here's part I.

The first site I'll be looking at is called Rational Christianity, although I have a feeling that I won't find a lot of reason there. As example number one, it starts right out with a bang:

The primary reason was punishment for wrongdoing. The populations of the destroyed cities had long histories of grievous sins (Gen 15:16, Dt 25:17-19), which often included sacrificing their children to false gods (Dt 12:29-31).

Hmmm, I'm tempted to point out a few stories here. First, god commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and he is ready, willing, and able to do so. The only reason he doesn't follow through is because god stays his hand at the last second. Let's also not forget the story of Jephthah in Judges 29..

Finally, the whole Xian myth is based upon god performing a sacrifice of his own child in Jesus. It seems that the sin wouldn't have been child sacrifice so much as doing it to the wrong god. Apparently, having faith in the wrong god is grounds to have your whole entire culture wiped out? Sorry, but this does not justify wholesale slaughter, especially for a god that has other means and ability to carry out those means, and is supposedly omni-benevolent.

In later parts, I'll examine some other apologies that Xians have used to try and defend this heinous act.

Truth vs. Safety?

2009-10-10T14:03:00.005-04:00

The Bible is not a nice book. Beyond all the atrocities of the old testament (rape, slavery, genocide, misogyny, war, murder, animal sacrifice) the new testament is supposedly better. Yet, what we find is not much in the way of condoning the old testament and the addition of hell, the idea that we are all deserving of infinite torture, and human/god sacrifice.

Yet, most modern Xians today will say that the Bible is a wonderful book, filled with peace and love and all kinds of great moral lessons. I can only surmise that they are selectively reading both in which passages they read and how they interpret them (as there's no good way to spin genocide and those other things listed above). So, we are left with a serious disconnect between what people believe their holy book is about and what it's really about.

Well, maybe I've got it all wrong, right? Maybe it's all about peace and love and all that. Surely Xians have been peaceful and loving due to their Bible for the last 2000 years, right? Well, no, that's not right. It's only recently that this idea of the Bible as being a book about peace and love has been in fashion. Certainly early Xians didn't think this way, nor did Xians who participated in such things as the Crusades, Witch trials, the Inquisition, or even those Xians who participate in today's organizations like the KKK or any other white power movement. For them, the Bible could only be said to be about peace and love once you're done eradicating all non-Xians.

Still, many Xians do hold this new view of a more peaceful scripture and presumably a subset of them will act more peacefully due to it. We've seen what rampant hate among a Xian majority can wreak in terms of havoc, and while we still see problems from the Xian majority trying to unduly influence others, this idea of a peaceful Xianity seems to have a dampening effect. So, my question is, should we embrace this and push more Xians to act in accordance with peace, or should we lay out the evil that is contained within the Bible and proclaim the truth?

I can see benefits to both sides. As I talked about above, a more secure lifestyle for non-Xians is a desired goal, and if Xians think that their religion should allow for this, it would be beneficial to us not to stop them. Of course, the downside is that the irrationality of the belief system will be seen as even more acceptable and more congruent with morality, which would be a serious drawback for actual morality.

On the flip side of things, truth is its own reward. We should be truthful and honest, and help Xians see how vile and evil their beliefs/scriptures really are. Yes, if some Xians succumb to that and actually become more vile and evil, it will be detrimental, but I happen to believe that other Xians may wake up and see their religion for what it is. They may throw off the shackles of irrational and outdated thoughts and help us to drag ourselves out of immorality and irrationality.

Religion vs. Xianity?

2009-10-08T16:21:00.004-04:00

Why do some Xians insist that they don't belong to a "religion" but have a "personal relationship" with Jesus instead? The very definition of religion seems to indicate that all Xians are part of a religion:

religion [ri-lij-uhn]
noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

I've been told that it is an attempt to bypass the negative connotations of the word "religion" but I simply don't buy that. In this country (the US) there are no negative connotations to the word religion, and there certainly isn't any in the dictionary definition.

Is this an attempt to somehow claim that their beliefs are more valid or more special than the mundane beliefs of "religions?" Does anyone know why some Xians claim they aren't part of a religion?

What is a True Xian?

2009-10-05T17:00:00.003-04:00

Most Xians that one talks to have no trouble identifying who is a True Xian and who is not. So, maybe some of the Xian commenters and readers here can give us all a definition of what a True Xian is. So, let's hear some definitions.

What I don't want to see is something like this, "A Xian is one who is Christ-like," because that's not very descriptive.

So, have at it.

PS - For those wondering where I've been, I had a hard drive failure which incapacitated my computer for a while (prolly too much pron and baby eating recipes!) Hopefully I'll be back with regularity now.

Too Good

2009-09-05T13:14:00.002-04:00

OK, this video is simply too good not to share. Enjoy. (Note: NSFW due to language.)

Do you Have Enough Faith?

2009-08-31T15:45:00.005-04:00

Many apologetics have sprung up to explain away the passages in the Bible that declare that those who pray will get what they ask for - in light of the fact that this seems to not be demonstrably true. In a previous post I give the passages in question and I took on the apologetic excuse that god only answers prayers that are concurrent with his will. There are other excuses though, and one commenter continually decided to try and harp on one (even though I explicitly stated that the OP was about a different argument). I've also previously argued against other apologetics, like the argument that prayers are answered, but on god's timeline and that Jesus was only empowering the specific people he spoke to (although the latter one does not deal with this verse specifically, it's good enough for the purpose of dispelling any notions that the issue has been dealt with).

Never-the-less, I decided that perhaps I should deal with the others. So, this post will focus on the apologetic tactic of trying to interpret the phrase, "If ye have faith." This argument from the apologist focuses on the conditional phrase that is uttered in Matthew 21:21

Matthew 21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. 22:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

So, the obvious tactic here is to claim that Jesus was not incorrect, and that those prayers that are not answered are coming from people who don't have faith - which is generally interpreted to be not having enough faith or not having the right kind of faith. How convenient - and how very post hoc. This allows the Xian to claim after the fact that an "answered" prayer fit the description and a "non-answered" prayer did not. It's the same as painting a bulls-eye around an arrow that has already been shot.

Yet, it still falls apart under investigation, as no Xians claim to have 100% success rate for prayer (that I know of at least). If any do claim this, then we only need to have them pray for something immediate (like the regrowth of an amputated arm for instance) to test and see if this person can validate their success rate claim. Invariably it will fail.

Also, this is nothing more than the no true Scotsman fallacy, writ large. I can imagine someone saying, "True Xians have their prayers answered, so if a prayer is not answered, then the Xian in question is not a true Xian." It's fallacious though, no matter how you slice it. Once again, we see apologetics that fail to answer the objections brought forth.

The pope is an Idiot

2009-08-29T13:12:00.007-04:00

Apparently, the pope is now saying that atheists are to blame for global warming. Well, to be fair, I'm not even sure he believes in global warming, and he never actually says those words. He simply blames atheists for ruining the Earth. Remember, this is the same guy who also claimed that condoms are making the AIDS epidemic worse in Africa.

Now, apparently, atheists are greedy people who are destroying the Earth because we're all a bunch of nihilists...or something. I think the rebuttal in the second paragraph is pretty good:

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, commented: “This is rich coming from the leader of an organisation that has plundered the world to enrich itself. As he sits in his golden palaces, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and material wealth, he lectures the rest of us about restraint and greed. We have nothing to learn about environmentalism from this hypocrite.”

I mean, is the pope really that idiotic as to not know that the Bible gives dominion over the Earth to humans to do with as we please? That most Xians believe that we don't have the ability to destroy god's favored creation? That the Bible has been and still is used to justify the raping of the Earth and its resources and that religious people tend to be the ones most likely to deny that climate change is happening?

2009-08-27T17:36:00.005-04:00

There was a recent comment on Robert's blog defending the actions of those who get overly sensitive and moan and complain about the existence of atheists. In the comment, the Xian accuses atheists of condoning eternal damnation.

Excuse me? Which atheists have ever said that the concept of hell is not only real, but have condoned it? Which atheists say that if god sends people to hell, then it's a good thing?

On the contrary, it is Xians who defend this action. It is Xians who claim that god sending people to hell is good and righteous. It is Xians that defend the abhorrent torture that god inflicts on people that aren't worthy enough of bestowing his grace upon. Atheists aren't condoning torture, Xians are - every time they defend the actions of their maniacal, ruthless, sadistic god.

Prayer vs. god's Will

2009-08-23T10:21:00.008-04:00

The Bible claims in a few places that whatever one prays for, god will answer that prayer. For example:

Matthew 21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. 22:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Or maybe this one (although one could argue that it's specifically talking about asking for god to show himself, but that's a bad argument to make since it's demonstrably not true):

Luke 11:9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 11 If a son asks for bread[d] from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Or maybe this one does it for you:

Matthew 17:20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

For the Xian, these passages are troublesome for the obvious reason that prayer is rather ineffective. It is obviously not true that whatever one asks for, one receives. So, they have to conjure up reasons for why this is not so. I want to focus on one of those reasons, which is the idea that god only does what is according to his will, so the prayer must be in accord with god's will for it to be carried out.

And, in response to that, I have to say that it's a rather spectacularly bad argument.

First, the text does not give mention that what one prays for must be in accordance with god's will. Secondly, having to pray for things that god is going to do anyway completely negates the idea that prayer does anything at all. If the apologist is right, then prayer is completely ineffective, since one must first ask for something that was going to happen anyway, since it was part of god's will. The prayer has no effect since everything that happens was always a part of god's will or it wasn't. So, in trying to save the efficacy of prayer, the apologist has thrown it out the window and hoped that no one would notice. But, drastic measures must be taken when your beliefs do not agree with reality I suppose.

What is Heaven?

2009-08-23T10:15:00.005-04:00

So, what is heaven? Are there any Xians who would like to step up and lay out a definition for it that makes sense? How is eternal bliss possible? How can one be eternally blissful while others are suffering in hell? How is it possible for one to retain one's free will (which is impossible anyway if god is omni-max) and there be no evil, yet that's not possible on Earth?

The concept of heaven is simply not well thought out. The extent of the thinking has generally been on the order of simply gaining some sort of reward for currying god's favor, and as a counter point to hell. Hell, on the other hand, has been well imagined by various authors and laypeople alike, but not so with heaven. This is because no conception of heaven makes sense. Maybe some theists here can prove me wrong?

Drunken Monkeys

2009-08-21T11:10:00.008-04:00

I'm back, but not fully, so I thought that I would share an interesting video on monkeys and their drinking habits. Notice how alike they are to humans, especially the percentages of binge drinkers, moderate drinkers, and teetotalers.

I also wanted to share part of an essay by Sam Harris, wherein he speaks about animal behavior:

And just how widespread must “glimmerings” of morality be among other animals before [Francis] Collins—who, after all, knows a thing or two about genes—begins to wonder whether our moral sense has evolutionary precursors in the natural world? What if mice showed greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.[11]) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage-mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.[12]) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They might.[13]) Wouldn’t these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution?

...

11 Langford DJ, Crager SE, Shehzad Z, Smith SB, Sotocinal SG, et al. (2006) Social modulation of pain as evidence for empathy in mice. Science 312: 1967-1970. ↩

12 Masserman JH, Wechkin S, Terris W (1964) “Altruistic” Behavior in Rhesus Monkeys. Am J Psychiatry 121: 584-585. ↩

13 Our picture of chimp notions of fairness is somewhat muddled. There is no question that they notice inequity, but they do not seem to care if they profit from it. Brosnan SF (2008) How primates (including us!) respond to inequity. Adv Health Econ Health Serv Res 20: 99-124. Jensen K, Call J, Tomasello M (2007) Chimpanzees are rational maximizers in an ultimatum game. Science 318: 107-109. Jensen K, Hare B, Call J, Tomasello M (2006) What’s in it for me? Self-regard precludes altruism and spite in chimpanzees. Proc Biol Sci 273: 1013-1021. Silk JB, Brosnan SF, Vonk J, Henrich J, Povinelli DJ, et al. (2005) Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members. Nature 437: 1357-1359. Brosnan SF, Schiff HC, de Waal FB (2005) Tolerance for inequity may increase with social closeness in chimpanzees. Proc Biol Sci 272: 253-258.

Administrativa

2009-08-17T17:01:00.002-04:00

Due to a medical emergency, I won't be able to post for a few days. Hopefully I'll be back soon to point out more problems with theism and Xianity.

Shelter

2009-08-14T17:08:00.007-04:00

Xians are constantly amazed that we don't believe in their gods, further they are similarly amazed that we don't worship their god. Color me amazed that anyone would worship such a god as theirs. This is a god that has killed almost all of humanity simply because he couldn't think of a better way to make them behave. This is a god that sends people to hell for eternal torment and torture simply because he can't think of a better way to punish people for finite crimes or a better way to handle their souls after they die. This is a god that visit vile plagues upon people with pestilence and death simply because he needs to show off.

And, what does the Xian apologist do by defending this god? The Xian apologist is basically defending genocide, rape, murder, torture, etc. How can people actually defend this type of behavior? How can people provide shelter to an entity that would engage in this type of behavior? How can people actually decide that we should look up to this type of behavior with reverence and worship it?

I think most Xians are better than that, and I think that most Xians should really look at the holy book they hold with such reverence. They should understand that defending this god is defending a monster that visits the worst crimes imaginable upon the people that he supposedly loves. Even if this god did create us all, it doesn't make it right, as might does not make right. So, this is an open call to all Xians. Stop. Stop defending torture. Stop defending genocide. Stop defending murder. Start defending humans and humanity.

A Rather Fragile Ego

2009-08-11T16:51:00.004-04:00

Dr. Dembski's Course at SWBTS

AP410 This is the undegrad course. You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).

AP510 This is the masters course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God -- for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 3,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).

AP810 This is the D.Min. course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God -- for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) develop a Sunday-school lesson plan based on the book Understanding Intelligent Design (worth 20% of your grade).

This is simply pathetic. Many creationists claim that students are indoctrinated with evolution, yet here, we can clearly see what indoctrination is about. Dembski is basing grades on whether the students go and proselytize his theological ideas on "hostile" websites. Are you kidding me? And, does anyone doubt that the "theological significance of intelligent design" better be that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and that when he asks for a critical book review what he means is that he wants them to be critical of Collins? (Note: I'm no fan of Collins, but to basically instruct your students to pan the guy is pretty low.)

Funny thing is that at SWBTS, Dembski is pretty likely to end up having students that are devotees of Answers in Genesis which as an organization is lukewarm to ID. But, the real question is, is Dembski's ego so fragile that he has to force his students to suck up to him like that? I think the answer is, yes.

Preferential Treatment

2009-08-09T12:47:00.006-04:00

Today I saw a phenomenon that I'm sure many of you have seen as well. Passing by a church, there were tons of cars illegally parked on the street, choking down traffic and making it more dangerous to drive that particular street. Except, on Sunday, it's not illegal. Here, we have the city that I live in changing the rules specifically for churches and giving preferential treatment.

Of course, it's not just my city, but it happens all over the country. Cities and towns, counties and districts, parishes, etc. - they all give special treatment to churches to facilitate parking in illegal manners simply because it is Sunday. In Washington DC, for instance, it gets so bad that cars completely block roads, and the city turns a blind eye. This is special treatment, and it violates the separation of church and state, because cities would not be so kind to other, non-religious or secular groups wanting the same treatment.

The kicker of it is that this particular church is surrounded by a very large lot of land that is beautifully manicured. In fact, they could put a parking lot on their land that would house most of the cars, at least. Those cars could also park legally on side streets or in a public lot that is only 2 blocks away or so. There are options besides creating a more dangerous road for other drivers and giving special treatment to a specific group from a specific religion.

Reality

2009-08-06T15:58:00.005-04:00

I've noticed a certain trend amongst many Xians that debate, and that is to simply disregard anything that contradicts their view and/or assert the opposite and claim that they are right by default. For instance, if one claims the Bible has contradictions, they simply claim it does not and nothing you do can counter that. If you show them the evidence for evolution, they simply claim that what they believe is true because it's true and your evidence doesn't count for anything.

I attribute this to a weird belief that one's beliefs are more important and more compelling than reality or real world data. If real world data conflicts with their beliefs, they simply discard the data. They hold their beliefs up to be the best data that there is. Their beliefs are incontrovertible, they are true no matter what, etc.

Yet, reality does not operate that way. It doesn't matter how hard you believe that you can breathe in space unaided, it ain't gonna happen. It doesn't matter how hard you believe you can fly unaided like a bird, it ain't gonna happen. I think most theists accept these two facts. So, why does the theist believe that this doesn't hold when it comes to their personal god beliefs? That, I don't know. I wish I did. Anyone have any hypotheses?

Terrorism

2009-08-04T16:37:00.006-04:00

ter⋅ror⋅ism
/ˈtɛrəˌrɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ter-uh-riz-uhm] Show IPA

–noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Let's see, god tells us to obey or we will be tortured for eternity. Check. He tells his followers to go out and threaten others in his name. Check. Some even go so far as to claim that they do not need to follow the government of this land as they follow only god. Check.

god is a terrorist and Xianity could be classified a terrorist movement. Discuss.

It's Not Easy Being Perfect

2009-08-02T11:21:00.007-04:00

Supposedly, god is perfect as well as being omni-max. I'd like to take a look today at what that means logically.

If god is perfect, then god can not err. god is completely incapable of choosing something that is not the absolute best choice. Given all the parameters and scale (down to the infinitesimally small) god can always find a way to distinguish between 2 different choices, and therefore must always choose the better one in order to be perfect.

But, there's a problem with this, in that it reduces god to a robot that only has one course of action at any and all times. god really has no freedom to choose anything but that which is perfect. IOW, god would have no free will. The apologists will be quick to tell us, however, that free will is a good thing (which is why god wants us to have it so badly, even though it causes so much suffering). Yet, if god is perfect, god is denied something that is good. Therefore, god is not perfect in that sense and the concept of perfection is self-contradictory.

So, how does this relate to my last post on god choosing his omni-max powers? The need to be perfect would preclude the ability for god to forgo any of his omni-max powers. Further, the need to be perfect would not enable god to willing forget things that would cause harm in others, even if one could argue that it doesn't violate omni-benevolence. This destroys any apologist's attempt to solve any omni-max contradictions by claiming that god could choose not to exercise his powers. If god is choosing not to exercise his powers and it is leading to a less than perfect situation, then god has chosen to do something that violates his perfection, making him less than perfect.

In summary, what we find is that the concept of the perfect, omni-max god is inherently self-contradictory, and so is any faith that is based on it.

Can god not be Omnimax?

2009-07-30T17:22:00.006-04:00

Can an omnimax god decide not to be omnimax? That's an interesting question, and one that some may try to use to defeat some of the inherent problems with both the Bible and the contradictions that arise from omnimax deities (i.e. contradictions with the different abilities, contradictions with free will, etc.) So, it seems an appropriate question to ask, does it not?

So, let's focus on the main three omnis. They are:

omnipotence - the ability to do literally anything
omniscience - knowledge of everything
omnibenevolence - infinite goodness at all times and places.

First, let's look at omnipotence. Can god choose not to have the ability to do anything at all? This is a tough question. Logically speaking, if god were to give up the ability to do anything, he could always get it back so long as he keeps the power to regain his powers. If he gives that up, he may forever be in a non-omnipotent state, which would mean that god was omnipotent at some time but is not now and has forever given up that ability. I doubt many theists would be happy with that, however. So, I think what we find is that god must either always be omnipotent or would have given up that power forever.

I think we can similarly argue in regards to omniscience. god could use his omnipotent powers to give up knowledge, hence allowing him to now know what Adam and Eve had done in the garden.

Lastly is omnibenevolence. Can god give that up? I think the answer here must be no. If god gives up omnibenevolence or decides not to exercise it so that he can commit evil, then that evil mark stays with him and he can no longer claim omnibenevolence at any point.

If we were to throw in the concept of omnipresence - presence at all places and all times simultaneously - it makes the answers above different as none of them could be given up at any time, or else they are simultaneously given up at all times, which would cause some very serious weird time effects I should think. Suffice it to say that if we were to add the fourth omni in there, god would have no ability to not be omnimax.

A different question would be whether god can choose not to use his omnimax powers. This I'll tackle in a subsequent blog post, as well as the addition of "perfection" and what that means to the god concept. Until then, thoughts?

Abort a Baby and Save a Soul

2009-07-28T20:10:00.004-04:00

In the comments, there's been quite a bit of talk about abortion lately. Specifically, for Xians that believe in an age of accountability (not a Biblical idea) it's inconsistent to be against abortion. Should we not rejoice at every soul that is saved and gets to go to heaven? That's exactly what they must believe an abortion does. If it is indeed a sin for someone to kill another, even if that murder sends the deceased to heaven (which BTW, is also inconsistent), then if one person decides to sacrifice her own life in order to help as many souls go to heaven as possible, shouldn't we thank that person?

In fact, abortion allows the soul to go to heaven without the messy problems of life and sin - without even the possibility of becoming corrupt and going to hell. The souls that are sent directly to heaven have been done a favor! They never have to suffer from some virus or disease, they never will have to experience hunger, they'll never be tortured as a supposed enemy combatant. In fact, if they were going to be born to the wrong religion, they never have to endure believing in the wrong god(s).

But, theists may argue that they don't get to experience the joys of this life, right? So what. They joy they experience is in heaven, which according to Xian theology far outstrips the fleeting joys of this life. It is far better to be in heaven than here on Earth, even for those living the Life of Reilly here.

And, for those Xians that don't believe in the age of accountability, don't think you guys are off the hook. I can say that it's a more Biblical stance, and that it's more consistent with opposing abortion, but it's not at all consistent with the idea of a just and loving god. It ends up being a trade of consistency in one area for inconsistency in another. (Note, the age of accountability group also runs afoul of the idea of a just and loving god, just in a different way.)

Just one more inconsistency from Xianity.

Evident Evidence?

2009-07-26T09:57:00.006-04:00

So, apparently some apologists think that we all have enough evidence to be convinced that god exists. Yet, it's demonstrable that this is not the case. Just look at the presence of atheists or non Xians, and this assertion is clearly false, unless one wants to try and argue that all non-Xians really believe in god but are denying it for whatever reason, which is clearly absurd. If we had the evidence that we need, we would all believe. Plus, god, being omniscient and all, would know what we all need in order to believe. So, god can't claim that we have what we need, especially when he knows that we don't.

The apologist might object, however, that god can't give us the evidence we need as it would violate our free will. But, isn't that exactly what theists try to do when trying to convince others of god? Isn't the theist trying to give us the argument that we need to come to god? Is that a violation of our free will? I don't think anyone would claim that the theist is violating the atheist's free will by arguing for god. Then why would one claim that if god gave us that information it would somehow be a violation of our free will? This is a case of special pleading.

So, bottom line is that god has made an error in the Bible by claiming something that is not true. Actually, worse than that, if god really is omni-max, then god has lied. Of course, in reality, it's just another example of how the Xian myth simply doesn't make sense.

(P.S. "Acedemics" indeed.)

2009-07-24T09:21:00.004-04:00

Let us read from the book of Mark

The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.

Yea verily.

So, let's get this straight, shall we? Jesus has to die. In fact, that's the whole backing to the Xian religion. If Jesus doesn't die, then no human/deity/blood sacrifice is made to allow god to allow himself to convince himself to forgive us for the sins that we commit by being made that way by god. Anyway, Jesus dying is a good thing.

Jesus has to be turned over to the authorities so that he can be tortured, because apparently that's a good thing too. god requires lots of blood, so Jesus needs to be sacrificed.

In order for that to happen, someone needs to betray Jesus. If someone doesn't betray Jesus, then none of the sacrifice stuff happens and Xianity has no reason to exist.

But, that person, Judas, that betrays Jesus, "woe to that man...good were it for that man if he had never existed." What? Judas does Xians a favor! Judas makes it possible for Xianity to have a reason to exist. Judas makes it possible for god to allow himself to forgive us, since he can sate himself with his own divine blood. Judas should be a hero. But, what does he get for setting the whole thing in motion? "Woe to that man." I can only surmise that Judas gets hell for doing what is a good thing according to the Xian tradition, a necessary thing.

Xianity is full of contradictory ideas such as this, which is why I'm surprised that people take it seriously.

Don't Make Fun of Bald People...

2009-07-22T16:08:00.004-04:00

...at least not ones that god likes, I guess.

Bear attack!

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

Oh how loving the Xian god is. Because some children were impertinent, they deserved death. Forty two of them (yes, 42 - you know what I'm talking about). And, the worst part is that the children had no ability to repent of their sins before being mauled by the bears. They should all be smoldering in hell right now.

And, this underscores another difficulty in the Xian theology - that of the untimely death. For those sects that believe that one must repent of all of one's sins, what happens to the person who meets an untimely death? The person in question may be a completely upstanding citizen, wholly moral, but because their death comes suddenly, they wind up in hell. What nonsense is that? Of course, we shouldn't be surprised coming from a religion where it is somehow just that we are cast into hell by default (unless god decides to "grace" us) simply for being born human, and god makes determinations on who gets saved based on thought crime and one's ability to discern whether god's existence is indeed in evidence or not - i.e. it has nothing to do with morality. This puts the lie to those who would argue that Xianity is all about morality, that we gain our morality from it, and other such lies.

Marjoe

2009-07-21T15:41:00.009-04:00

I had another post in mind for today, but after watching the excellent documentary called Marjoe last night, I had a new topic for today.

I first found out about this documentary by a passing reference to it in Daniel Dennett's book Breaking the Spell. It's rather old, having come out in 1972, so I'm disappointed that I haven't watched it sooner.

Marjoe Gortner was born to two evangelical parents who were both fire and brimstone types and tent revivalists. He is the fourth generation of preachers in his family, and by the age of 4 he was an ordained minister himself. By the age of 5 he was performing marriages.

The film picks up with him as an adult, as he tours around the country holding tent revivals. He preaches, he sings, he struts, he lays on hands, he speaks in tongues, he heals people, but there's only one problem. He's a sham, and he admits it. He's playing these people for their money. He has no special powers, yet the people are still sent into paroxisms of supposed joy with the feeling of Jesus. They are supposedly healed, and they are convinced they are healed, even though Marjoe is a fraud. He even talks about how once one person does it, everyone else wants to follow suit. They want so much to not be shown up, they want so much to be the most pious one there. I feel sort of bad for some of them, but I'm also reminded of the old adage about a fool and his money.

In summary, I highly recommend this film, especially for anyone who's familiar with these tent revivals. (Confidential to Robert Madewell: I really think you'll appreciate it very much.)

Huge Amount of Ignorance

2009-07-18T08:20:00.005-04:00

In the comments section, I was challenged on my knowledge of a couple passages that are late additions to the gospel. In even went so far as to look up what Xian sites had to say. Christianity Today just so happened to agree with me...

But, that's not what I'm writing about today. Sometimes fate just smiles on you, and in a totally unconnected and unrelated way you find something just so perfectly funny that it has to be brought up.

[There] is a huge amount of ignorance that we're catering to in the Christian public.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

2009-07-16T16:37:00.005-04:00

OK, so many creationists just don't get it - let me spell it out. The Flintstones was not a documentary.

First, let's get something straight. A scientific theory is a well supported explanation of natural phenomena, facts, and data that is has not been falsified, and best explains the data we have. Theories are the upper echelon of science. Theories are not wild-assed guesses, as some creationists like to pretend. Nor are theories simply problematic guesses trying to become laws. Laws and theories are quite distinct things in science and there isn't a hierarchy whereby ideas go along stages, with "law" being the last and best stage.

Also, science changes as new data becomes available. This is not a failing of science, but a strength. It shows a willingness to incorporate the best information we have in formulating the best explanations that we can.

Evolution is a theory. It is well supported by many independent lines of scientific inquiry (paleontology, biology, genetics, geology, etc.) We have many different independent lines of evidence that support it. Evolution is built on facts, many facts, and is the over-arching explanation of those facts. No other alternative "explanation" even comes close (and no, creationism and ID are not theories - they aren't even proper hypotheses). Evolution has been rigorously tested for over 150 years now and it is still weathering the test of time, even though it has made predictions that could have falsified it (like the chromosomal fusion of human chromosomes from our last common ancestor with apes that was predicted and found, for example).

Evolution, as an explanation, is (very simplified) that mutations to the genetic material of organisms provide for variation, which is then selected by nature for survival and the passing on of those genes.

All animals on the planet are just as evolved as we are. We are not more evolved than other animals. Evolution is happening still.

Evolution is not random. The variations that arise do have a random component, but selection is not a random process.

It does not mean that we should see giant flies with 20 wings, or dats (dog/cat crosses). It doesn't mean that we will grow another arm (not unless genetic material for another arm arises and is selected for over say the next 20 million years that is).

Now, why go through all this? It's because I'm constantly amazed at the amount of creationists who know just about nothing about evolution, but are dead sure it's wrong. They don't know what a theory is. They don't know how science works. They don't know how evolution works. They don't even understand the very, very simplistic overview that I just gave above.

But they do know that it all has to be wrong, wrong, wrong.

Do these creationists really think that either virtually all scientists are part of some atheistic conspiracy to dupe the public, or that virtually all scientists are stupid or blinded by atheism and that they, having done no research or any other lab work, somehow know more than the professionals? Any other options?

Evidential Gaps

2009-07-14T17:31:00.003-04:00

A favorite creationist tactic is to deny any and all evidence for any piece of science that contradicts their beliefs. But, some take it even further. They will look at the evidence that does exist, declare that it's not enough, then summarily dismiss all the evidence as non-existent. I hope the following example shows how absurd this line of thinking is.

Suppose person A lives in California and person B lives in New York. Let's say that person A and person B run into each other in CA and person A asks how person B got there. B claims that she drove her car from NY to CA. A then asks for evidence.

B remembers that she kept some of her receipts. She has receipts from gassing up a couple times along the way. She has some receipts from eating meals along the road. But, alas she doesn't have every single receipt, so she can't form an unbroken line. Further, she can't account for the gaps in between receipts - for instance, how did she get to dinner from lunch? She can present her car, but this is not enough for A. A claims that due to some missing receipts and not having enough evidence, none of the receipts, the car, or anything else that B presents count as evidence that B did indeed drive across the country.

Clearly, this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. A has taken the evidence that does exist, and thrown it away as if it did not simply because it did not meet A's demands. Without a full explanation down to some nebulous detail, nothing counts at all toward an explanation in A's eyes. Yet, it's absurd to claim that those receipts do not constitute some evidence of the claim made by B, as we can all hopefully see. Never-the-less, we see this attitude from creationists all the time in denying wide swathes of science, whether it be evolution, abiogenesis, the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, or even modern medicine. In short, the creationist would rather deny reality in order to hold onto her preconceptions than to accept reality for what it is and shape her beliefs around it. Yet, it's a bad argument to make, because it only makes the creationist look silly and uninformed.

Interpretations

2009-07-12T12:59:00.006-04:00

I've been thinking about Post Modernism and the interpretations of literary works. Can we discern what the author is talking about? I think that in many cases we can, or at least we can make a good guess. In the case of non-fiction works, this should be trivial, as this is the intent - for the author to introduce a point and communicate it. Once we start talking about fictional works, it gets more difficult. We usually can, however, discern an author's intent because it will inevitably be about things that we relate to and/or understand.

OK, so let's look at the category of religious writings. These have to be thought of as a separate category unto themselves, because of the vehement disagreement on whether they are fictional accounts or not. Also, there's an argument over whether these books tell us about things we can comprehend or not? If we deal with the Xian texts (the OT and NT) we find a story that most believers will claim is non-fictional (indeed elements of it are pretty clear in that regard, whether they are correct or not) and about an entity that we can hope to understand.

Can we discern the author's meaning? I would have to say that in many cases we can not. Let's take one example: Genesis 1. We can't look back at the obviously erroneous origin story of Genesis with our modern scientific knowledge and conclude that the author obviously didn't intend to claim what is claimed in the text. It's quite probable that the authors did intend to claim that the universe was formed in 6 literal days as the text indicates.

Other instances might be where the authors tell us about god. Did the authors simply make up those passages or was god dictating? Either way, we really can't claim to know what they are talking about or how to interpret the writings when the authors themselves may very well not know what they were trying to describe (seeing as how god is supposedly indescribable).

All of this - plus the ambiguity and contradictions - puts us at a significant disadvantage when deciphering the Bible. Is someone using an incorrect interpretation when they claim that the Bible denounces all homosexuals? Is it an incorrect interpretation to claim that Xians should wage holy war on other religious followers? Should one not ever murder, not murder other Jews, or murder freely when god commands it? And, the list goes on. There's really not a good foundation for Xians to use to conclude that their interpretation is necessarily right when it comes to the Bible.

2009-07-08T13:54:00.000-04:00

As I've talked about before, denying the bad assumptions made by theists does not necessarily mean that the atheist is making her own assumption. This is a rather common error, however, that theists often make. "Well, I assume god and you assume not god, so we're even." No, we are not. I do not need to assume not god in order to point out the holes in your logic and that your assumption is bad. I simply need not to accept your assumption as valid. This does not mean that I'm asserting my own assumption.

But, since this is so hard to understand for some, I thought I would try to create an example to illustrate the point. Let's say that two people are setting up a sting operation where they are going to be listening to a multi-national group of people. Let's pick up the conversation in progress:

Person A - Here's how the plan will go. We'll tap their phones and their meeting room and then we'll have Jane listen in. I assume that Jane will be able to understand any language they choose to use and with her help, we will be able to get the information we need. I guarantee success.
Person B - Um, wait. You assume Jane will be able to understand them?
A - Yes. Why not?
B - Do you know what language they'll be using?
A - No.
B - Do you know what languages Jane understands?
A - No.
B - I'm highly skeptical of your guarantee that this will work.
A - Oh, you're just assuming that Jane can't do it. I assume that she can. What's the difference? You have your assumption, and I have mine. We may as well just go into this operation and believe it will work.

So, in this example, did Person B really assume that Jane can't understand whatever language they use, or did Person B simply point out that the assumption may be faulty (probably is faulty, since most humans don't have the language skills of C3PO)? The analogy breaks down a bit in the theism question, because it's very hard to simply wait and see (although some theists do advocate simply waiting and seeing what happens after death) but I think it's instructive. Questioning or not accepting someone's assumptions do not entail negative assumptions or contrary assumptions are being made. This is of utmost importance in the philosophical debate over god, because theists really are sitting on a bad hand. They are required to make unsupported (read, irrational) assumptions in order to get to their preferred ending point, while the atheist is not under any such obligation.