Ok, finally… I was so close for so long. I have the new site layout pretty much finished (I think).

Let me know if you see some obvious mistakes when you’re clicking around, and let me know what you think of the redesign. If you are reading this through an RSS feed, come check out the site.

Now, as to not disappoint with a mere “Theme update” post, I’ll throw in a few quick thoughts about the following youtube video:

This guy’s name is Chad — youtube handle: “RationalResponder” and he’s a protege of Ray Comfort — and it shows.

He analyzes a question he hears from atheists that goes something like, “Do you actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead or that a guy lived in a fish for a few days?”

His 1, 2, switcheroo argument/tactic summarized:

1. Agree with the skeptic that these miraculous events are miraculous.
2. Claim that the skeptic misrepresents Christianity if he thinks that there is a naturalistic explanation for the miraculous events.
The question asked by the skeptic, somehow, is a misrepresentation of Christianity, because Christianity has always said that the supernatural was involved with these miracles!
Switcheroo: Can you give me one reason why God, the creator of the universe, wouldn’t be able to alter His creation in any way He sees fit?

First of all, I don’t know a single person who thinks that Christians believe that miracles happened via natural means. There can be misrepresentations of what Christians believe, but this is just not one I have ever come across.

Second, I’m not sure that Chad wants to claim this method of thinking in his daily life. Is he suggesting that he believes any and every supernatural claim ever made because, well, God could do anything? My guess is that he has a fair amount of skepticism to any number of supernatural claims that I might make off the top of my head. Like, God caused rocks in my backyard to levitate during my childhood as long as no one was observing them, for example.

Would Chad ask me why I believed that? — If he did, and I answered, “Well, you are misrepresenting my belief in rock-levitation by asking for a naturalistic cause — or, perhaps you can give me a reason why God, creator of the universe, wouldn’t be able to cause rocks to levitate?” do you think he’d be satisfied?

Let me know your thoughts on the new theme; and on Chad’s youtube video and what response you might take if he responded to you that way.

So close to finishing my new theme layout… hopefully that’ll be completed soon and won’t cause any major disruptions to the site.

Added as a new member to the blogroll: AiGBusted — which is not about the company, but Answers in Genesis. The blog is focused on debunking creationism as a whole and Answers in Genesis in particular.

I commented briefly on the Vox Day and Common Sense atheism debate — mostly analyzed the argument put forth by VD. Roughly: Christianity’s conception of evil, pain, suffering, injustice in the world is better than any other on offer. Therefore, one ought to be a Christian.

The argument is essentially one premise and a conclusion. Two obvious methods of attack: contest the premise, or contest that the conclusion follows from the premise. My vote is to choose the second method — it does no harm to accept the premise even if you do not agree with it, the conclusion does not follow regardless.

———

Also, a friend of mine got in a discussion with a street preacher last night (and I wasn’t there). He picked up a large ( 9in by 20 in) paper photocopy of a US $100 bill with a message on the back from Way of the Master (Ray Comfort) on the back.

I also have recently found some youtube videos of “open air preaching” — and I think I’m going to have to try and write up how I think it’s best to handle the street-preacher situation.

I’m talking about what to do when you get this kind of standard street preaching:

Notice that the username is “RationalResponder” — One of the most frequent objections that I hear to engaging in religious debates is something along the lines: “You can’t argue with reason against a position that isn’t based on reason.” Or some similar wording.

I understand the point that’s being made, but the main issue I have with that is: the people who you think are being ‘irrational’ — and they may well be — do not think that they are being irrational.

They will argue that they are being rational, and they often think they are being rational. This is a good thing; a person who shares rationality as a value has definite potential.

Think of it this way: if a Christian is offended by reading, ‘Christians are irrational’ — that leads to common ground that being rational is a good thing. If you think they are being irrational, point to where and what; he will have to try and respond how those beliefs/actions are rational. You both have a specific point to argue over; and you both agree on the values behind it.

Two bloggers have been going back and forth with some religious debate. Luke from Common Sense Atheism and Vox Day from Vox Day have been going back and forth via letters between their two blogs. I’ve witnessed 5 from Luke, 4 from Vox and hundreds of comments. [The 1st letter from Luke; the 1st response from Vox] I was going to link to each and every letter, but if you are compelled enough to read through all of them, the first salvos are enough to get you started.

I’m interested in examining an argument from Vox that I have not encountered before (at least not directly).

When asked why he is a Christian –

Vox Day: Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later.

Which does not seem to immediately follow. A person could easily have the same reason for being a Satanist (in the real sense of worshipping Lucifer, the supernatural creature — not LeVay). “Why am I a Satanist? Because I believe in evil… ”

VD continues –

VD: The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

Still isn’t clear what having an accurate description about the pain, suffering, injustice and cruelty of the world; therefore worship whatever wrote the description? Seriously, imagine some guy on the street tells you, “So this supernatural being spoke to me last night, and he had the best grasp of the true meaning of evil. He could give a perfect account of the suffering, cruelty, injustice — just everything rotten about this world. His name is Lucifer, and boy, I cannot tell you how AWESOME this guy was at describing evil. It’s like… he’s lived it! So, I decided to worship this being.”

One might be tempted to say, “Sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this…”

I think VD’s argument from evil is the worst argument for being a Christian that I’ve seen written in full sentences, but I may be forgetting a couple.

———————–

Semi-relatedly, VD goes into his idea of God’s morality and chastises Luke for having a non-objective standard of evil. Fair enough, but a little inconsistent from what I can tell.

VD: I believe logic dictates that the Creator alone has the right to set the standards for His Creation. His game, His rules. In keeping with that principle, God always has the absolute right to do as He sees fit, which just so happens to be precisely the answer He gave to Job and company. The answer to Euthyphro’s so-called dilemma is that the good is good because it is commanded by God, since there is no objective, supra-divine standard of Good by which His commands may be judged.

VD: I stated there that the arbitrary nature of God’s goodness, which has long been a known solution to the first horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma, “can only be considered a genuine problem for those who insist that a fixed principle cannot be arbitrary.”

This is a fairly standard response to Euthyphro. There are some semi-weird consequences, but I’ll save those for another time.

Vox then took Luke to task for having a subjective concept of evil:

VD: Applying the relevant definition of objective to your answer – “not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion” – regarding the nature of evil clearly indicates that you believe evil is a fundamentally subjective concept. In fact, based on your explication of desirism, it is apparent that in your view, evil is not only subjective, but dynamic and transitory as well. Unfortunately, this rejection of the concept of objective evil renders it impossible for us to compare the Christian view of evil with other accounts of it because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum.

I’ll just make the observation that this criticism seems inconsistent with the earlier statements on evil by VD.

VD: “because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum.”

But God, allegedly, has no restrictions on what He calls evil. All right. There is no restrictions or supra-divine standard which His commands may be judged. All right. So God has the right to set the standards for His creation and the absolute right to do as He sees fit. All right.

Does this mean that God could say that murder is good and it would be good?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could say that stomping puppies to death for fun is good on Tuesdays alone, and every other day of the week it is evil?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could exactly flip what was evil and what was good at whim, any time He wanted, as many times as He wanted, throughout the course of all time?
Yes.
Could God flip what was good and what was evil without telling us humans?
Yes.
Could God flip on a daily basis the moral standing of stomping puppies and keep constant our visceral reactions to the same event the same?
Yes.
Is this not a completely arbitrary conception of evil?
Yes.
So what was that again about VD claiming we could not possibly know what is evil for any single act at any given point on the space-time continuum — non-objective?

These are some of my observations so far; depending on where the Luke/Vox discussion goes from here I may comment on it more in the future.

My last entry was about the phrasing of questions to cut off common retreats from the question itself. The last improvement left the question as:

Atheist: Why do you worship a God that allows suffering?

I mentioned that it’s still not a great formulation, and a few comments commented that I was leaving a cliffhanger. What further improvments could be made? Quite a few in my estimation:

Tactic: make specific claims, ask for specific claims. Use clear examples and ask for clear examples.

This ‘tactic’ is a completely symmetric burden for theist and atheist alike. Add specificity to the suffering. It’s much easier to dismiss or trivialize suffering when talked about in the abstract. So take a very specific example of the worst kind of suffering you can come up with: the murder of Jessica Lunsford, the 9 year old girl who was repeatedly raped and then murdered by being buried alive.

Atheist: How can you worship a god that allowed the suffering of someone like Jessica Lunsford?

Now, the question, as it’s worded is confrontational, and we’re going for conversational. Does this mean blunting the criticism at all? No, but it means delivering the full impact of the punch without giving the person you’re talking with a bunch of things to legitimately complain about — those would just be distractions. So, start the interaction from the right mindset. Let me say now that I have read Christian “witnessing guides” that mention witnessing to non-Christians by becoming their friend so that the target is more accepting the Christian message. I disagree with this tactic profoundly, and I am not advocating that atheists try to befriend a person they argue with the goal of sneaking in a deconversion. The goal ought to be effective communication, and with that in mind, try to keep in mind a few suggestions.

• First, the person you are talking with probably holds the beliefs he does because he believes them to be true — not to annoy you.
• Second, your first goal should be to figure out what the person actually believes. Think how annoying is it when you are asked, “So you believe humans evolved entirely by chance?” We don’t want to be arguing against a belief that he doesn’t hold.
• Third, once you know what they believe, try to figure out why they believe what they do. You actually want to know what is going on in their head. You can even word it like:

Conversational Atheist: Help me understand your mindset — because it is honestly a mystery to me — I cannot conceive of ever praising a god that had full power to prevent the suffering of Jessica Lunsford, yet stood by and watched it happen. If such a god existed, I might understand withholding condemnation out of deference to some kind of unknowable reasoning. But it is truly inconceivable to me that you could actually praise such a creature. Do you see where I am coming from?

We are getting close to the best approach that I can think of from the starting question, “Why does God allow suffering?”

Few more nuances: So, as I say elsewhere, fight for the argument that is easiest to defend that is contrary to a fundamental belief. I suggest that it’s unthinkable to praise such a God without knowing the specific reasons for allowing it, and that it’s possible that a person could remain a “is god moral” agnostic. Could I argue that if such a god exists we ought to condemn it? Sure, but there are ways out that the theist has available that take time to wrap up.

Here’s how I would deal with the most common response. Notice that I chose a phrasing that anticipates the response, “But, isn’t it possible that somehow, God has some kind of plan where… greater suffering was averted by this seemingly atrocious event?”

So many ripe targets from such a response, but don’t take the bait. Many atheists are very good at identifying every single logical fallacy and error. They honestly could wrestle every single misstep to the ground, but I’m suggesting that there is considerable argumentative strength in not pursuing every possible argument. Concede as much as you can while retaining a rock solid case on your main point.

Conversational Atheist: Sure, it’s conceivable that a creature that had this power could have a good reason; it’s also conceivable that a creature is a sadistic and evil being. So, I could imagine withholding judgment, and I can imagine condemnation for allowing what appears to be an unfettered evil occur, but, seriously, how could you praise such a creature without knowing the specific good reasons?

Comments, questions, and suggested improvements welcome! As are, especially, if you have tried this approach out yourself: report and success or failures you’ve had.

My approach to religious debates aims at making the conversations as effective as possible.

What does it mean to have an ‘effective’ debate or conversation?

At minimum, an effective debate has to have actually engaged the real thoughts and beliefs of the participants. In what I’ve witnessed, most religious arguments fail at achieving even at this meager goal.

Beyond a minimal ‘meeting of the minds’ — an effective debate will involve real challenges to the real thoughts of the participants.

And, of course, the most effective argument or debate concludes with one side convincing the other of something they had not accepted before.

I have encountered many people who think that any kind of religious debate or conversation is a waste of time.

As I said before, I aim to make religious conversations between people as effective as possible. I am not expecting my ideas to become dogma — it is almost certain that I have not formulated the perfect recipe that yields the most effective conversations possible — and so I welcome suggestions, challenges, and improvements on all aspects of my approach.

Over the years, I have had hundreds of conversations with pleasant people from every faith — the ideas that I share come from my dissecting these conversations and thinking about what worked, and why; what didn’t work, and why.

Let me give you an example. Imagine two people, one a committed Christian, the other a committed atheist secular humanist. Let’s start with a plausible broadside from the secular humanist.

Atheist: “Why does God allow suffering?”

I have come to think that there are several reasons why this question is phrased terribly. First of all, the atheist is asking the Christian to explain God’s behavior. All other considerations aside, if every other piece of the ensuing argument completely destroys every possible reason that the Christian can think of for God allowing suffering there is a huge retreat still available. Namely, the ‘why should I know why God does that’ 0r some other variation.

Rule 1: Do not let your argument hinge on asking a Christian to explain something he could conceivably say, “I don’t know” as a legitimate answer to an argument.

So, how do you tweak the question to ask essentially the same thing, but to close the “I don’t know” loophole? Ask the slightly improved question:

Atheist: “Why do you worship a God that allows suffering?”

It’s still not great, but notice that answering, ‘why should I know why I do that’ is not a legitimate answer to the question. You may still hear that answer, but even the Christian will feel uncomfortable about such a lame answer.

In watching other people debate or talk, it’s much easier, of course, to be critical of a missed opportunity or a wrong step.

Today (September 30th) is the first annual Blasphemy Day International.

Let me quote the idea behind the idea:

Blasphemy Day International is a campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a day to promote free speech and to stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to challenge, criticize, and satirize religion without fear of murder, litigation, or reprisal. The event was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs that have been given a privileged status over other beliefs.

Blasphemy Day International is a volunteer-coordinated campaign administered by the Center for Inquiry as part of its Campaign for Free Expression. For more information, go to http://www.centerforinquiry.net/campaign_for_free_expression.

Many of the people who happen by my blog will have seen the news of this campaign already, which I clearly endorse — especially the emphasis on the freedom of speech.

I have a two news items that I wanted to share to help motivate the day.

First — Christopher Hitchens’ Slate article Yale Surrenders talks about how the Yale Press decided to not print the cartoons in an academic book about the cartoons.

Second — 20 years for blasphemy in Afghanistan (NY Times) — the plight of the 24 year old who was sentenced to death for downloading an article. His sentence was reduced from death to 20 years in prison.

The student, Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, from northern Afghanistan, was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to death for blasphemy after accusations that he had written and distributed an article about the role of women in Islam. Mr. Kambakhsh has denied having written the article and said he had downloaded it from the Internet. His family and lawyers say he has been denied a fair trial.

In 2008, an appeals court in Kabul commuted the death sentence to 20 years’ imprisonment, a decision that was upheld by a tribunal of the Supreme Court last month.

No, it is not ok to sentence a person to 20 years for Blasphemy.

Help promote free speech in your own way every day, but especially today.

There is frequent noise made about the “New Atheists” and others who refuse to argue against the sophisticated faith of the Theological-Einsteins whose faith is subtle and nuanced. There are many responses that are possible — among them that the majority of believers do not believe in gods in some sophisticated way.

I have had many conversations, arguments, and debates with ministers, pastors, clergy of different types, and even philosophy professors who happened to be religious. But, I have not had a chance to have an extended interaction with a professional Christian Theologian, and I have been itching for the chance.

I itch no longer.

I have been interacting with a professional Christian theologian who is a professor of historical theology at a Canadian seminary. His name is Randal Rauser — and goes by RD. He has a blog on christianpost.com: The Tentative Apologist.

On that blog I comment under the handle: ConverseAtheist (because, like so many other sites, ConversationalAtheist is too long to be a valid username — sigh).

My interaction with him started when he insisted that an atheist is making a positive knowledge claim about the universe, and that as such, requires evidence and justification.

I asked him if he believed in Zeus; or if by being an azeusist he was making a positive knowledge claim about the universe — and since this requires evidence and justification; what evidence does he have?

After more back and forth than it was worth the response was:

“I am an agnostic about whether Zeus exists as a lesser-spirit being; but an atheist as to whether Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe.”

– Let me fill in some background –

RD has posted some essays that argue for the existence of a being greater than which cannot be conceived. He further posted about how when he prays to Yahweh, coincidences happen; when he stops praying to Yahweh, coincidences stop happening. When asked if these coincidences could hold up to scientific scrutiny, or some kind of rigorous statistical testing — he wisely concedes that they would not.
I’ll let you into my mind as I planned out my interaction with RD.

When dealing with a trained obsfucator theologian, he may employ a vast array of tactics and techniques to evade answering difficult questions.

First, I set up a situation that mirrored, in every relevant way that I could imagine, a parallel religious belief to what RD believes. I also wanted to make that hypothetical belief be intentionally ridiculous. (I wanted motivation for RD to defend his cherished beliefs from being equated with nonsense.)

I proposed a hypothetical person, Bob, who followed a sort of reasoning to get to his religious beliefs.
Bob starts with something like the ontological argument, and believes that the most perfect being exists necessarily.
Bob, while sitting in his car at a stoplight, prays to Zeus to change the light to green. It eventually turns green.
Based on this evidence, Bob believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe that necessarily exists.

I then asked RD whether his Christian beliefs were indistinguishably well-justified as Bob’s belief in Zeus.

Why did I try this approach? Well, for one, I was hoping to actually get an account from a supposedly sophisticated believer about why he believes in specific supernatural claims. I actually thought that I might learn quite a bit from the guy. However, the other alternative is, failing that, I would have the admission from a professional theologian that his religious beliefs are as well justified as believing in Zeus because streetlights turn green.

Win-win for me as far as I could tell: I would either learn some impressive justification for Christian beliefs, or get an admission that Christianity is indistinguishably well-justified as pure nonsense.

The first hurdle, though, seemed to be that RD could not view this challenge as anything but a famous previous argument that has an answer written down somewhere. I honestly could not believe the answers that RD gave.

RD started with essentially: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from evil! — Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from arbitrary belief! — Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous ontological argument applies to Zeus! — Here is my response to that! (his actual quote from that one: “A being that owes its existence to other beings cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived. Zeus owes his existence to other beings. Therefore, Zeus cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived.”)

Here is a representative note from me on August 17, 2009 — Me: “… you have missed the question entirely. I was not asking if YOU would be equally well justified for believing in either Yahweh or Zeus; but whether bob-Zeus; you-Yahweh is as justifiable for each of you.”

And again on August 20, 2009 — Me: “In fact, you apparently cannot even distinguish the justification for your belief in Yahweh with Bob’s belief in Zeus…And I beg you, if you believe that you have a slightly better justification than this, to state it.”

And again on August 23, 2009 — Me: “I am not asking you to believe in Zeus. I am not asking whether it makes sense for you to believe in Zeus. You have never prayed to Zeus for the light to turn green and witnessed the miracle. Thus, you do not have the same reasons as Bob to believe in Zeus — I agree. I am talking about a guy, who believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe because Zeus answers his prayers about street lights, and because Zeus punishes Christian churches. And I am asking whether you can come up with a defeater for his beliefs. And if not, to at least distinguish the justifications for each of your beliefs. Or, to admit that your Christian belief is indistinguishably well-justified as Bob’s.”

And yet still, on August 24, 2009 RD says: “ConverseAtheist has been hammering on this point for awhile now, focusing in particular on Zeus. That is, if I believe in the Christian God, why not believe in the Greek God as well? Or why not the Greek God instead of the Christian God? It would seem that from ConverseAtheist’s perspective, the basic problem, I suppose, is arbitrariness.”And then, after much arm-twisting, RD claims to have more justification that hypothetical Bob.

Ready?

Christian theologian’s belief in Yahweh and his life and professional livelihood is more justifed than nonsense because of the following fact:the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus is larger than the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh.

Take a second to let that sink in.

I asked whether I could use his reasoning as illustrative of the kind of thinking that gives intellectual vindication to Christian faith.

September 4th, Me: “I’m pleading with you to make the case to the ideal disinterested rational listener that your religious beliefs are more justified for you to believe than a person who thinks Zeus is the creator of the universe because the streetlights turn green when he prays to Zeus. Whatever you think an ideal disinterested rational listener should take into account as evidence, present that evidence as though he will take it into account.”

I think this is a generally useful idea: write to what you expect would convince the ideal disinterested rational listener. It’s win-win — either you convince your primary target, or other rational people should be able to read the account for themselves and see that the primary is being irrational.

I continued: “When you mentioned that the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh is not as large as the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus, I gained valuable insight into precisely what a professional theologian counts as a distinguishing justification for his personal religious beliefs over nonsense.

But — and this is important — you have free reign. List defeaters to this guy’s Zeus beliefs. List evidence for your beliefs. Or not — I personally do not have an opinion on this apriori. I want to see what you, a professional Christian theologian, think would count to a disinterested listener that is considering the justification that you have for your beliefs versus the justification a Zeus-believer has for his beliefs.”

I was explicit in highlighting the fact that RD has free reign to call in whatever justification/evidence/whatever that he wants.

I finished: “I’m not asking you to convince this listener that one or the other has the correct beliefs.What evidence do you have that supports your personal belief? What do you think counts?What do you think counts in favor of your belief and against this hypothetical nonsense?”

Conclusion: A theologian apparently has an absolutely terrible time claiming justification for his religious beliefs from nonsense. The single justification that he claimed gave his Christian beliefs more validity than nonsense was to argue from popularity.

So far, RD has written 4 entries since that last comment and no response to me.I’ll update this post if anything happens.

PZ Meyers challenged atheist bloggers to request the Good News Magazine booklet on evolution, and to write up an entry about … what we learned? Or, an entry tearing into little pieces — something like one of the two. Anyway, after we got the booklet, we were supposed to go through it.

I got the booklet on Friday, and it’s long enough to warrant several entries. This entry is about the first chapter called: Society’s Dramatic Shift. You can read the text for this section here.

If I want any hope of finishing, I have to pick and choose the pieces I’ll go after.

Section: Human reproduction argues against evolution

“If human beings are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, how is it that we have the disadvantage of requiring a member of the opposite sex to reproduce, when lower forms of life—such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa—are sexless and far more prolific? If they can reproduce by far simpler methods, why can’t we? If evolution is true, what went wrong?”

Let’s start with the conditional statement at the beginning: “If human beings are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process…” You mean how evolution has been aiming for something that is the highest peak of awesome since the beginning of time — and that peak is humanity — right? It’s a nice thought, perhaps, but it’s not based off of the science of evolution. Now, I’m going to try and be careful, because I do not consider myself an expert on evolution. That being said, I think that I have a fair grasp of the basics (and gladly take correction if I make a misstep).

So, the condition statement is false — let’s analyze the consequent just for fun anyway. “… how is it that we have the disadvantage of requiring a member of the opposite sex to reproduce, when lower forms of life—such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa—are sexless and far more prolific?”

Good question. I recently read a book that addressed this topic specifically:The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley. I recommend the book if you are interested in the topic. I’d mention that I think Ridley does a fair job of being careful to separate the parts of the book that are well established from the more speculative parts. Another book that I recommend looks at human sexuality through an interesting conflict: Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles by Robin Baker.In any case, the question of why sex instead of sexless is an interesting one, and manifestly not necsessarily a disadvantage in general.

“Regrettably, such obvious flaws in the theory are too often overlooked.”

The book moves from asking questions, to assuming the questions are unanswerable and flaws of the theory of evolution. The questions are not asked because the authors are curious and want to know whether they have been answered (they have); they are being asked to score rhetorical points without a care to the truth of the matter.

Section: A worldview with far-reaching implications

Now, the implications of a worldview have nothing to do with the factual claims being made by or within a worldview. The fact of the matter is a separate issue from the consequences of those facts.

“Now, almost a century and a half after the publication of Darwin’sOrigin of Species, we can see where his thinking has led. In Europe in particular, belief in a personal God has plummeted.”

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Although I’ll give it to them, having a plausible naturalistic answer to the questions that previously had “god did it” as the most easily conceivable answer probably does play a role.

“In the United States, court decisions have interpreted constitutional guarantees of freedomof religion as freedomfrom religion—effectively banning public expression of religious beliefs and denying the country’s rich religious heritage.”

When I see statements like these in published works, I can’t decide if the writer is actively being deceptive, or if he is just a moron. It is a question for the ages.

Has the government shut down a church’s signs — effectively banning any church’s public expression of religious beliefs?

I would argue that the government should not be in the business of making theological decrees.

When the government started printing paper money with the words: In God We Trust on them for the first time in 1957, was the government acting within its rights to make a proclamation about God?

This question can go one of two ways: yes or no.

I would answer, no, the government was acting inappropriately by adding this proclamation.

If you would answer yes, then, they must not have a problem with the government changing the text in the future at some point to say, “God is Imaginary”. A statement that I also think would be inappropriate to add to the currency. I’ve had interesting conversations where a person actually starts to see how, with every transaction, the US government taking the time to remind both parties that God is not real is odd, presumptive and inappropriate. Often, the person has only considered just removing the words “In God We Trust” — and the government being neutral toward theological claims is interpreted as being pro-atheistic.

Truly pro-atheism slogans on money ought to make everyone as uncomfortable as pro-theism slogans on money.

“Meanwhile, the world languishes in the sorrow and suffering that results from rejecting absolute moral standards.”

Sigh. So many ways to respond to this one … how about I choose this way:

Absolute moral standards — all right, I’ll bite.

There are moral absolutes, like: genocide is wrong. I’m not some ‘moral relativist’. On this basis, I judge God to be immoral: 1 Sam. 15:2-3. If you are a Christian, do you condemn God as ordering immoral acts, or are you a ‘moral relativist’ that thinks that genocide is only sometimes wrong?

“What you believe does matter.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Supernatural faith-based religions create undue fears and worries in the minds of children and adults about terrors that don’t exist. Religion redirects time, money, resources and people wanting to do good into useless endeavors. Faith promotes magical and superstitious thinking. It gives respect and credence to religious leaders and religious ideas for no good reason other than blind faith – and often with terrible results.

It matters what you believe?

Yes, it is one of the main reasonswhy I engage in religious debate.

I’ll post about the later chapters in the coming weeks.

I don’t think that this Archbishop would say that Freedom of religion should not exist for adults, but he doesn’t think that it should exist for “kids” as old as 16…

Allowing pupils to opt out of school prayer is wrong, says Archbishop of Wales

“A law allowing 16-year-olds to opt out of prayers in assembly devalues and marginalises religion in schools, Dr Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, has warned.

…

All schools are required to offer a daily act of worship.”

16 year olds should not be allowed to opt out of prayers — an amazing statement, isn’t it? And, ALL schools are required to offer a daily act of worship.

What is the principle being invoked here? That, if we allow freedom of religion to people as old at 16, then they might actually use those rights and think how unpleasant that would make the job of someone like, an Archbishop, to pick a job at random?

That we might be able to convince the people about our claims about the supernatural if we can keep repeating the nonsense for just a few more obligatory years?

This is just a really creepy example of allowing religion and government to mix — obligatory schooling until a certain age that requires indoctrination. And complaints come in when the obligatory nature is removed when the kids are 16? Really?

I think it it more disturbing when churches actually fully accept what they are really doing.

sigh