Benevolence and Happiness

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.

Can You Prove It?

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.

Maybe god Told him to?

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)

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

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.

How To Helpfuls

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.

Theism Predicts (Introduction)

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."

By Whose Standards?

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?

Do you Have Enough Faith?

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.

Prayer vs. god's Will

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?

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?

It's Not Easy Being Perfect

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?

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

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?

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.)

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.

Evidential Gaps

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.

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.

Response to a Comment

On my recent post on whether assumptions of god are rational a commenter named "mdeltoro" has brought up quite a few questions. I figured that I could not fully answer them all and do the answers justice in a blog comment, so I've promoted the answers to a full blog post. Below is a response to those comments.

mdeltoro's first complaint to my argument is this:

You secularists stake everthing on your ability to observe emperical evidence...But this assumes that the information conveyed to our brains by our senses is an accurate representation of the things "out there" in the world, which our senses are supposed to be observing. This is undemonstrable other than by . . . empirical evidence.

On first blush, one might think that this poses a significant problem, although wouldn't it pose a problem for both atheist and theist alike? Except that it's not an assumption of naturalists to assume that our senses are accurate. We sense that the sun moves around the Earth, but this is not accurate. The idea of using empirical study and the scientific method is to remove the inaccuracies that can come from our senses. And, of course, it's highly pragmatic - simply put, it works. It's not an assumption, but a conclusion that empirical results, once verified and tested over and over, and held provisionally until new data comes along and overturns our conclusions in favor of new, better ones, is simply superior to any method that has yet been devised, especially any religious method.

Next, mdeltoro has argued that it's an assumption to believe that other humans can understand my blog. I argued that this is a demonstrated reality, in that we were having a conversation, which was met with an argument about postmodern literary interpretations:

Many a literature professor would disagree with your notion that this is a "demonstrated reality," as attested by the fact that so often the question has become NOT "What did the author mean?" but "What does this mean TO YOU?"

Yet, this misses the mark by a bit. We can both ask what the author of a piece means and what it means to us, they are not mutually exclusive, nor is this any sort of answer to the demonstrated fact that we are having a conversation via this blog and our meanings (not always fully conveyed, but enough for the purposes of answering this challenge) are being comprehended.

So, now we get to the meat of it:

What I am saying is that, on the basis of your worldview, none of these assumptions can be justified.

Hmmm, let's explore that. So far, none of the supposed assumptions that naturalists hold are actually assumptions. So, let's see where this goes.

In a universe moved along by random chance (which secular evolutionists assure us is THE key to explaining how things came to be as they are), it actually makes just as much sense to affirm as to deny that the sun will not rise tomorrow, that our brains may not have sufficient continuity of process that we really understand each other, or that gravity will shut off tomorrow.

OK, so yeah, in a universe where everything is determined by a roll of the die, it wouldn't make sense. But, that's a strawman representation of the naturalist's position. Do random factors play into how the world works? Of course. Randomly mutating genes of animals provide the change that allows natural selection to select the critters that will propagate their genes, but who said that that is a random process? Answer: no one except creationists.

Let us put the question this way: "Why does the fact that things have 'always' operated in a certain way imply that they will continue to operate in the same way?" How can a secularist answer this question? To say, "We know by empirical observation that things have consistently operated this way in the past" is to (1) assume the basic reliability of our senses (unjustified on a secular worldview, we've already noted) and (2) to beg the question.

I'm confused here. Isn't it a good indicator of how things work that they seem to be consistent? In no way do I have to assume the reliability of my senses or beg the question to conclude that it is highly likely that the sun will continue its pattern of rising in the morning (or more properly that the Earth will continue to rotate in such a way that my senses tell me the sun is rising). Does this mean it will? No, it does not, but it would take a major catastrophe (in which case we'd all be dead) or a violation of the working models that we have of the universe...which leads me to mdeltoro's next argument.

I've argued that if one believes in a god that can and does perform miracles, then one can not conclude that the sun will necessarily rise tomorrow, that natural laws will not be violated, etc. We know that this god (if the Bible is correct) has made the sun stand still in the sky, which would be a violation of physics. Believing in a god that can do and does do these things at any time means that one can not be confident that miracles will not occur and can't assume an orderly universe. mdeltoro's response to me follows:

I know this is a sacred cow of secular science, but it is simply neither historically nor logically demonstrable. Theistic and Christian scientists have made and continue to make valuable scientific discoveries, because they are seeking to discover the universe and the laws which God created.

So, I'm failing to see what "historical" demonstration would look like, nor how it is relevant. Logically, it's pretty sound. If you believe that an entity exists that can violate physical law, then how can you believe those laws are inviolate? And, as an aside, this has nothing to do with whether scientists who are Xians can do science. Of course they can. The problem for mdeltoro is that in order to do science they must check their religion at the door.

From a logical point of view, affirming that God can and has done miracles is not the same as affirming that He does them willy-nilly or does them all the time.

This is true, and it's a good point, but it doesn't address my point, which is that if this god exists, then the potential exists at any and all times for the laws to simply change or be violated at the will of this deity.

If the purpose of Christian scientists is to discover the laws God made that normally govern His universe, no harm is done in affirming that God can and at times has acted outside those laws.

And, here's the crux - this is the problem that arises. All data is called into question once one assumes a god that can change anything and everything on a whim. How can we be certain of the data that leads us to a conclusion, when it might be an anomaly of this god's whim?

None of this, of course, refutes the fact that the god assumption is irrational and that using this assumption and then arguing to a conclusion does not make the conclusion rational. In fact, I think this actually supports my arguments. In order to perform science, we have to check our religious assumptions at the door. We have to ignore the religious conclusion that any or all of our data could be faulty due to god's interference. We have to ignore that a god such as the one in the Bible could very well change physical laws at any time and make anything happen, regardless of what we've previously observed (i.e. the sun may not rise tomorrow morning and yet we would not be dead).

Rational Assumptions

How often have you heard the following sort of argument - "Given my assumptions, it's perfectly rational to believe in Xianity (or insert any religion here as YMMV)."

But, is that really true? I mean, using this as a guideline, anything could be considered rational if one uncritically accepts certain assumptions.

I simply have to have the right assumptions, like that unicorns exist, and they are invisible because they are magical creatures and can do things like that. I'll also assume that they don't love us, and would like to see us enslaved. I'll also assume that they have an unhealthy obsession with humping other animals and are big fans of genetic manipulation, yet lack the ability to use test tubes (due to having hooves instead of opposable thumbs) so they have to use eugenics instead of manipulating genes.

Given these assumptions, it's rational to believe that invisible alien unicorns are secretly infiltrating petting zoos all across the nation and having sex with the animals in a secret eugenics-type program in order to breed animals that will rise up and overthrow their tyrannical human overlords and install the unicorns as leaders of this bountiful planet.

The problem, of course, is that uncritically accepting assumptions that are unsupported is not rational. So, the acceptance of irrational assumptions puts the final conclusion also in the irrational category. Therefore, it simply is not rational to believe in god, especially due to the irrational assumptions that are required in order to do so.