Clearing Up the Shenanigans: Tom Gilson and True Reason

It seems that Tom Gilson would like to continue to play the typical Christian apologist “you don't get my arguments” card, rather than explain in clear terms what exactly his chapter was about, if he was in fact not making the argument I attributed to him (which seems wildly off the mark, since I quote him directly several times). In my last post I restated my argument and quoted Gilson directly from Chapter 12 to demonstrate to those who might be curious that I did indeed correctly interpret his argument.

To this response, all Gilson has done is play coy, refusing to elaborate on what his argument entailed and why my reply was in error. When asked to defend his argument he replied by saying:

By the way: I didn't defend my argument from the book because what you wrote was either obviously wrong (for example, that God violated natural law when he created ex nihilo) or unrelated to my argument. There was nothing there for me to defend my argument from.
On a first impression your blog post looked like a criticism of my chapter. On a closer look it turned out to be more or less unsuccessful criticisms of other things. That's why I wrote a blog post wondering what it was that you were after.
Resipisence, I'm glad you liked his question.

AA, if you didn't understand what the questions on my blog post had to do with your response, may I point out that most of them included quotations from that post, and the rest of them paraphrased things you had written?

If you can't figure out what those quotations and paraphrases had to do with your post, shall I try again? If I try again, what would you suggest I do to make the connections clear? The usual answer to that question is quotations and paraphrases. Is there a better approach that I'm not aware of?

This reply is curious since his blog post responding to my initial criticisms doesn't even come close to addressing nearly anything I said, and it appears to further confuse the situation.

I am going to go through and breakdown Gilson's entire response to demonstrate why I believe his responses thus far have been less than satisfactory.

I’m having trouble figuring out what the Arizona Atheist is after in his critique of my Chapter 10 in True Reason: Responding to the Irrationality of the New Atheism. (You can read a version of that chapter here.)

After comparing the original article and the slightly edited piece in True Reason, the original article is a pretty close match, with the exception of the last five paragraphs describing how science relied upon a belief in a natural order, which was provided by Christianity, according to Gilson. My guess as to why he edited this section from the piece in True Reason is because in Chapter 11 Sean McDowell made the same argument already, which I successfully rebutted. In short, atheistic Greeks saw the orderliness of nature long before Christianity arrived.

Gilson continues, which is where things begin to get confusing. I will place the entirety of Gilson's reply in blockquotes and respond throughout:

He might be trying to show that my explanation was ad hoc. He mentioned something to that effect early on, but if that was his purpose, he didn’t carry it through. He proceeded to write as if trying to show that my explanation was incoherent, not ad hoc (made up or generated for no reason but to fill an explanatory gap).

I appreciate the definition of ad hoc, but I know what it means, which is why I used it. I called Gilson's argument ad hoc simply for the reasons I stated in my last post. His arguments are brought forth with no supporting basis, which is what most of my reply goes on to defend.

He might be saying that miracles happen too often (according to Christian teaching) for science to work. That was the main subject matter of my chapter, so it would be a relevant complaint. He only refers to a very short list of miracles, however, so if that’s what he was after, it was a tepid attempt at best.

Am I arguing that “miracles happen too often?” Yes, but Gilson misses my point. It had nothing to do with science, it had everything to do with god. Gilson argued in True Reason that god wants his creations to be “responsible moral agents;” and god also wants his creations to learn from experience. All of these things would not be possible if we lived in a world “of constant supernatural intervention” because “if there is to much chaos (“noise”) in a transmission, the message (signal) can’t get through to be clearly understood.” (130)

I argued that, at least according to numerous Christians around the world, their god intervenes in the affairs of the world on a daily basis and I provided one, among other examples, of a Christian friend who thanked god for coming across a set of chairs in someone's yard.

I also argued that far from being opposed to constant supernatural intervention the entire basis of Christianity is built upon supernatural intervention, including god coming down in human form as Jesus to the creation of the world out of absolutely nothing, which are in fact acts of the supernatural, unlike what Gilson stated in his reply (“it’s more than slightly difficult to see how God violated natural law by creating natural law (as creation ex nihilo indicates).”). Gilson's argument makes no logical sense. Christians argue all the time that “something cannot come from nothing” but for Christians apparently it's OK. And I suppose a man rising from the dead or a god-man coming down from heaven isn't a supernatural event? Gilson says nothing about these core beliefs of Christianity.

He might be saying that Christians’ purported prayer answers, if they were real, would indicate God interfering with the natural order too often for science to work. But that’s not likely, because the prayer answers he points to are not the sort of thing that undermine the regularity of nature.

This is why I said Gilson's reply did not appear to have anything to do with my response. In fact, I mention prayer not once throughout the entire reply. The idea isn't even hinted at. And he has badly understood the reasoning behind my responses, even though I thought I made it perfectly clear.

He might be saying that Christians’ prayer answers are “mere coincidences or hallucinations” — in fact he does suggest that — but if that’s his complaint, he’s simply changing the subject. That’s an interesting question, but not one that has anything to do with my chapter in True Reason.

Once again the word “prayer” is not to be found in the entire reply. And the partial quote Gilson uses is from this: “Do miracles happen as Christians attest all of the time or not? Does god intervene on a near daily basis or is the universe orderly and these events I’ve recounted are mere coincidences or hallucinations? Gilson can’t have it both ways.” I was summing up my argument that either supernatural interventions occur on a nearly daily basis as Christians attest around the world, or they do not. If they do, as my arguments suggest, then Gilson's argument, stating that god doesn't want to intervene very often, or that these interventions would not cause an interference in the natural order are false. In fact, as an example I said, referring to my Christian friend finding the chairs: “If Gilson argues that an orderly universe is a necessity then these “miracles” would be a near impossibility and god wouldn’t intervene as often as he clearly seems to do in the lives of many of his believers. Did my friend’s god get inside of that man’s head and convince him to get rid of perfectly good chairs? Did my friend’s god also get inside of his head and tell him to go down that street at that exact time of day? If not, why not? Do miracles happen as Christians attest all of the time or not? Does god intervene on a near daily basis or is the universe orderly and these events I’ve recounted are mere coincidences or hallucinations? Gilson can’t have it both ways.”

I would argue that causing an event to happen by making someone take a particular action that they may not have taken if not for the supernatural intervention seems to me to be a pretty large interference in the natural world. Why did my friend drive down that particular street at that particular time of day? And why did this man discard several perfectly good chairs?

He might be saying that God has problems doing hard things. That seems to be what he’s after here, speakcing of providential (not miraculous) prayer answers:

[Quoting me:] If Gilson argues that an orderly universe is a necessity then these “miracles” would be a near impossibility and god [sic] wouldn’t intervene as often as he clearly seems to do in the lives of many of his believers.

I can’t imagine, though, why he would think near impossibilities pose any problem for God as Christians understand God.

This makes no sense and he does not even deal with the context of my argument in the least. I just quoted this portion of one of my arguments above. It appears Gilson did not understand it at all.

He might be saying that Christians believe God is really messing around with natural law most of the time:

[Quoting me:] Even the very basis of Christianity is premised on miracles, ie. the very violation of natural laws: creation of the world ex nihilo and Jesus being brought back to life after being dead as a door nail for three days.

There must be some confusion there, though, since it’s more than slightly difficult to see how God violated natural law by creating natural law (as creation ex nihilo indicates). And again, while Christianity is premised on miracles, he hasn’t said anything to establish that it’s premised on miracles so frequent that science won’t work.

Finally, it appears that Gilson seems to have grasped my argument, but claims I never made an attempt to demonstrate how many miraculous events would cause a disruption in the natural world. Doesn't a man rising from the dead count? Doesn't god essentially getting inside peoples' heads, making them or influencing them to do certain things a violation of natural law??? This seems an absurd thing to say. He appears to pretend I said nothing about this!

Or he might be saying that I’ve made some mistake in proposing (as I did) that God made the universe orderly enough for humans to learn, understand, communicate, and be responsible for what we do:

[Quoting me:] Finally, the universe is much less orderly than he assumes and we have had a lot of difficulty understanding much of it. On the larger scale things appear to happen in a logical order and objects behave in an orderly manner. But once we move to the quantum level of the universe things get rather confusing and no longer behave as our rational minds would expect. This makes no sense on Gilson’s view because if god [sic] created the world in order for us to understand his creation and to “learn from experience,” then our many experiences and scientific observations would not conflict with our current understanding of the universe.

No, on the larger scale (the scale that’s relevant to my chapter in the book) things do not appear to happen “in a logical order and … in an orderly manner.” They do behave that way, except in the realm of personal freedom and choice. Quantum strangeness has no relevance to my point in that chapter. His premise here is flawed. But the biggest problem with that is that it’s a shot in the dark. He’s given no reason to suppose that his conclusion is true. If he tried he would fail, because there is no possible reason it could be true.

Gilson argued that “God intends that humans be able to 'learn from experience.'” But, if a large part of our universe is qualitatively difficult to understand shouldn't that count against his argument that god created the universe so we could understand it? Is the quantum world not a part of this universe? Of course it is! Did god not create the quantum world? If not, who did? But this is absurd of course. Christians believe that god created the entire universe. Gilson simply has no response to this very relevant fact.

He might be trying to tell us that naturalism explains things supernaturalism does not. He says this quite explicitly, in fact. He doesn’t tell us what that has to do with the content of the chapter he’s supposedly critiquing, though; nor does he enlighten us on why he thinks it relevant that “The laws of nature have never been shown to change. Most acts of the supernatural have perfectly natural explanations today.”

He is ignoring the context here. This quotation was a part of my brief discussion about the quantum world. I said that naturalism describes this quantum world better than Gilson's supernaturalist view. I said this because on the Christian view god supposedly created the world so we can understand it, but apparently we are unable to understand a large part of the world. This makes no sense on a supernaturalist view of the world, but makes perfect sense on a naturalist view of the world.

The other partial quote he uses has nothing to do with the quantum world argument I made. I said in full:

The laws of nature have never been shown to change. Most acts of the supernatural have perfectly natural explanations today, which leaves less and less room for the Christian god to hide. Christians must get increasingly clever about the rationalizations they use to ensure their god stays relevant. But this can only go on for so long. At this point in time I believe the evidence is such that the only logical god would be a Deistic god. As Lawrence M. Krauss said in his Wall Street Journal article: “Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world’s organized religions.” I believe this is the only logical religious position that is possible today.

I was alluding to Gilson's ad hoc arguments here, describing his and other Christians' rationalizations they continually use to prop up their ridiculous arguments, such as Gilson's in his Chapter that god doesn't want to intervene in the lives of his creations very often, when the facts say otherwise.

Gilson concludes his nonsensical reply with the following:

He does go on to add, “… which leaves less and less room for the Christian god [sic] to hide,” but again, there’s no indication of how that has anything to do with a chapter refuting Krauss’s argument that if science works then there must not be a God involved in nature. It’s another topic; an interesting one, but what it’s doing here in this location, I don’t know.
Now, if I felt the freedom to wander around and touch on multiple flaws in atheism, I could do so, just like he has with theism. I could go into detail on ways the Arizona Atheist missed the mark with his ad hoc accusation, his misunderstanding of the place of miracles and providence in Christianity, his demeaning view of Christians (with our “coincidences or hallucinations,” as if we can’t muster together the brain cells to think about such possibilities), his small view of a God who can’t do hard things, his mistaken view of God’s sovereign, ongoing relation to his creation, even his view of quantum physics.
If I did that, I would at least be responding to something he had said.
But rather than going into all that, I’ll just leave it at wondering, what is the Arizona Atheist after?

Krauss' article discussed the fact that Christians' rationalizations are becoming more and more desperate (like Gilson's arguments in True Reason) and that the only god that is compatible with science is the god is Deism.

Actually, as I've explained throughout this reply I did not merely “touch on multiple flaws” of Christianity. I responded directly to the arguments of Gilson's. His summary of what he believed my arguments to be were entirely inaccurate, and only once did he even correctly state my position, but failed to respond to my actual point.

The god of Christianity does appear to intervene within the world on a near constant basis, according to most Christians and the very basis of Christianity is premised upon miracle claims, placing it in direct conflict with science, which has shown the world to work with a certain regularity and consistency.

Tom Gilson Replies to My Response to Chapter 12 of True Reason

Tom Gilson has responded to my latest installment of my review of True Reason. In my response to Chapter 12, titled “God and Science Do Mix” Tom Gilson quotes Lawrence M. Krauss, who in turn quotes J.B.S. Haldane, from a 2009 Wall Street Journal article:

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. (129)

Gilson responds in his chapter: “He is right, of course, to take it that science depends on nature generally behaving itself. But he is wrong to think this is incompatible with Christianity.” He continues by making a series of arguments about how god wishes to communicate with his creations; god wants his creations to be “responsible moral agents;” and god also wants his creations to learn from experience. All of these things would not be possible if we lived in a world “of constant supernatural intervention” because “if there is to much chaos (“noise”) in a transmission, the message (signal) can't get through to be clearly understood.” (130)

As I said in my review of the Chapter:

Essentially all Gilson is arguing is that his god doesn’t want to dazzle his creations with constant supernatural interventions because he wants us to be able to predict with enough regularity the workings of the cosmos so we can do science and be responsible for our actions and learn from our experiences.

This argument fails for three reasons. First, it completely defies typical Christian experience; second, it contradicts the very foundation of Christianity; and third, this argument does not fit with what we know (or rather, don’t know) about the universe.

I go on to elaborate on these points. Gilson argued that god wants regularity in nature for the above reasons, but I argued that Gilson's argument contradicts the facts in a number of ways. First, it defies typical Christian experience, when Christians see miracles occurring in their lives on a daily basis; second, the very creation of “something from nothing” is another miracle claim, and third, despite Gilson's claims to the contrary, the universe is not as logical as he makes his readers believe. While our logical minds can grasp the universe on larger scales, our logical minds have much difficulty grasping the seeming illogical nature of the quantum world, where things appear to happen randomly and spontaneously without apparent reason or cause, which puts the universe at odds with our logical minds. Gilson's reasons contradict everything we know about the universe and about Christianity.

Why Gilson seems so confused is beyond me. In the final paragraph he writes,

God's desire to have a relationship of communication with humans, to give humans moral responsibility, and to make a world in which we can learn and grow, can all be found in pages of Scripture that predate modern science by millennia. (132)

He also says this on page 131: “Again, chaos of the sort Krauss envisions would clearly work against God's purposes.”

But as I demonstrated, the Christian world is not as orderly as Gilson argues with the many violations of natural law that are claimed to happen to Christians on a near daily basis. Now, I did not address Gilson's claim here that “And what is science but systematized learning from experience?”

His other argument appears to revolve around the idea that because god wants his creatures to learn “from experience” this makes Christianity compatible with science. This argument was so nonsensical I did not feel it merited a response so I focused on what appeared to be Gilson's main argument, since it took up over 90% of the chapter, describing the ways in which god wants an orderly universe for his creations. Since that series of arguments are flawed his very conclusion is also flawed.

Science is defined as “a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning, 'science' also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied.”

Gilson's definition is horribly simplistic, but if one properly defines science Christianity has nothing to do with it at all. Christianity is based upon faith, not testing, nor searching for answers outside of their limited belief system. In his work The Prescriptions Against the Heretics I think Tertullian summed up the typical anti-scientific views of most Christians when he said:

After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe...

In conclusion, I believe Gilson either did not grasp the counter-argument I was making, or this is just another example of sloppy writing on his part.

Against the Gods: Arguments Against God's Existence

Introduction:


It's been my hope to create a blog which attempts to answer a great majority of the claims and arguments put forth by theists about the existence of god, evolution, etc. I think I've amassed a great deal of information since I began my blog about a year and a half ago, but there seems to have been some arguments I've missed or just didn't bother to cover because, to put it simply, I thought they were too stupid to be taken seriously. For this reason I won't cover the Ontological arguments for god's existence, but I will cover all others. Because I have spent so much time on the arguments against "design" I will skip those sets of arguments as well (but I will place links that will point you to posts I've already written about it).

Because I began my blog in the first place to argue against the creationist/intelligent design nonsense a majority of my counter arguments and posts have been geared towards those kinds of arguments but because of reader feedback I've decided to address more arguments for god. I have referenced the book The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt, for a list of arguments that I will be debunking.

The truth is, though, that I see nothing special about these arguments. Each of these arguments are fatally flawed when you think about them for just a few minutes (or when you look at the contradictory evidence). When someone comes to me and starts using a lot of philosophical arguments I often dismiss them by claiming they're using "philosophical bullshit" because, while I like philosophy, it can oftentimes be abused and just because something sounds logical doesn't mean it represents reality. Take, for example, the experiment in which a feather is dropped along with a bowling ball (taking wind resistance out of the equation). Logic would dictate that the ball would hit the ground first, but in reality they would both hit the ground at the same time. This is an example of something that seems like a logical conclusion: a heavier object will fall faster, but if you eliminate the affect air has on the objects, they will fall at the same rate and hit the ground at the same time.

It is because of this that I strongly argue that logic by itself (and I'm referring to both our more common "every day logic" and philosophical logic), while extremely helpful and right much of the time, can sometimes get you into trouble. Again, this is why I will not bother with covering the Ontological arguments. They don't prove anything. Their premises may all be true, but that doesn't mean the conclusion is true in reality.

With that in mind, let's begin smashing the logical disaster that is theology.


The Euthyphro Dilemma:


The Euthyphro Dilemma is so named because it comes from Plato's Euthyphro, in which it's asked, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

This essentially means, "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?" This is also called the divine command theory.

Assuming god exists, it would be horrible to have morality dictated by such a being. The reasons are the following:

1. The first question that must be asked is what god are you interpreting? The god of the bible, or nature?

2. If it is the god of the bible then you have already lost the argument because god commands the murder of the inhabitants of multiple cities in Joshua 10:28-42, "...as the Lord the God of Israel had commanded." [NEB] This is one of many other slaughters found throughout the bible, including, Hosea 13:16:

"Samaria will become desolate because she has rebelled against her God; her babes will fall by the sword and be dashed to the ground, her woman with child shall be ripped up." [NEB]

Clearly, any sane human being will see that this is an immoral act, therefore, god cannot be considered a source for good morals since he commands the murder of many people.

Some christian apologists attempt to explain these acts away. Take the author of the apologist website godandscience.org for example. He says,

"The sixth commandment is "Thou shall not kill."1 Atheists claim that God violated His own commandment in ordering the destruction of entire cities, just to allow the Jews to have a homeland in the Middle East. The Bible confirms that God ordered the killing of thousands of people. Isn't this an open and shut case for the hypocrisy of the God of the Bible?

One thing you have to love about atheists is their extreme appreciation for the King James Version (KJV) translation. The KJV was translated in the early 17th century using an archaic form of modern English. In the last 400 years, English has changed significantly. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those who read the KJV (both believers and unbelievers) are unqualified to know what the text means in many instances because of word meaning changes. In attempting to demonstrate the contradiction of God's commands to Israel and the sixth commandment, atheist cite the KJV translation, "Thou shalt not kill."

However, like English, Hebrew, the language in which most of the Old Testament was written, uses different words for intentional vs. unintentional killing. The verse translated "Thou shalt not kill" in the KJV translation, is translated "You shall not murder"2 in modern translations - because these translations represents the real meaning of the Hebrew text. The Bible in Basic English translates the phrase, "Do not put anyone to death without cause."2 The Hebrew word used here is ratsach,3 which nearly always refers to intentional killing without cause (unless indicated otherwise by context). Hebrew law recognized accidental killing as not punishable. In fact, specific cities were designated as "cities of refuge," so that an unintentional killer could flee to escape retribution.4 The Hebrew word for "kill" in this instance is not ratsach, but nakah, which can refer to either premeditated or unintentional killing, depending upon context.5 Other Hebrew words also can refer to killing.6-8 The punishment for murder was the death sentence.9 However, to be convicted, there needed to be at least two eyewitnesses.10 The Bible also prescribes that people have a right to defend themselves against attack and use deadly force if necessary.11

To answer the question whether God breaks His own commandments, we need to determine if God committed murder (i.e., killed people without cause). [emphasis mine] The Bible is quite clear that God has killed people directly (the most prominent example being the flood) and indirectly (ordered peoples to be killed). If God ordered or participated in the killing of innocent people, then He would be guilty of murder. Let's look at two of the most prominent examples.

According to the Bible, God killed every human except Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives in the flood. Were any of these people killed unjustly? The Bible says specifically that all people (except Noah and his family) had become corrupted.12 Not only had all people become corrupted, but they were continually plotting evil!13 Is it possible that an entire culture can become corrupted? You bet! Recent history proves the point rather well. When the Nazis took over Germany before WWII, opposition was crushed and removed. When they began their purging of the undesirables (e.g., the Jews), virtually the entire society went along with the plan. Further examples are given on another page. So, the Bible indicates that no innocent people were killed in the flood.

What about when God ordered Joshua and his people to kill every man, woman and child in Canaan?14 What crime could be so great that entire populations of cities were designated for destruction? God told Moses that the nations that the Hebrew were replacing were wicked.15 How "wicked" were these people? The text tells us that they were burning their own sons and daughters in sacrifices to their gods.16 So we see that these people were not really innocent. For these reasons (and others17), God ordered the destruction of the peoples whom the Israelites dispossessed....

The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is really not as general as the King James version would indicate. The commandment actually refers to premeditated, unjustified killing - murder. Although God ordered the extermination of entire cities, He did so in righteous judgment on a people whose corruption had led to extreme wickedness, including child sacrifice. Did God destroy the righteous along with the wicked? In an exchange with Abraham, God indicated that He would spare the wicked to save the righteous. He demonstrated this principle by saving righteous people from Sodom and Jericho prior to their destruction. The charge that God indiscriminately murdered people does not hold to to critical evaluation of the biblical texts."

So, according to this guy, murder is killing another without cause, therefore god did not murder since he had reasons to do so. Alright, let's take this to it's logical conclusion. A wife cheats on her husband, which gives him a reason to murder her, and so he carries out his plan and kills her. Now, by this apologist's own argument, he would not have murdered his wife because he had a reason; it would have been justified.

Clearly this isn't the case (I've got to say too that this thinking is literally insane. The lengths apologists will go...). Even if we accept this author's claim that the people were "corrupted" and "evil" what exactly does this imply, and who is to judge what is 'corrupt' or 'evil?' The author's claim that the people were "evil" for their acts of child sacrifice sounds like a decent reason (to protect the children) but god is being a hypocrite if that was the case, because in the very next book of the bible god asks for a sacrifice:

Exodus 22:29-30: "Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the first born of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers from seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day (NIV)."

If god cannot even be consistent in what he deems immoral and moral, how are we to judge what is moral or not by looking at the actions of god in the bible?

Again, we're back at the same question as before. "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

3. A theist could look around at nature and conclude this god is a wonderful god, but nature, as even Charles Darwin wrote, is often cruel and inhumane. Animals kill and eat others for food, sometimes while still alive. Natural cells in a body turn cancerous and a person dies, etc.

True, there are very many things in nature that we could call "beautiful" but there are many cruel things as well, and if god is given credit for the good, he must also be given credit for the bad.

If god's commands cannot be considered moral, then is it possible that god is responsible for some kind of "moral sense" within us, which helps guide us?

This has been proposed by theologians for centuries. Christian apologists even today use this claim of "Natural Law Theory." One example is David Marshall, author of the book The Truth Behind the New Atheism, who seemingly tries to dismiss the findings of evolutionary psychology which is studying the innate nature of our moral sense, by saying that, "The naivete displayed by [Marc] Hauser's questionnaire is even more remarkable. Can a Harvard professor writing about morality have never heard of Natural Law Theory? Christians (and others) have been talking about it for thousands of years" (page 103). Marshall seems to be trying to give credit to theologians for this concept and not science for discovering it's truthful biological basis.

First of all, I wouldn't trust a "moral sense" put inside me by a being who is clearly hypocritical in nature and oftentimes horribly cruel.

Second, if god supposedly placed this moral sense within all humans, then how can theists claim that atheists are immoral if god gave this moral sense to everyone? Atheists and christians would be getting their morals from the same source. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Many theists insist homosexuals are to be put to death, but this isn't shared by atheists and others. So, where are theists getting this information? The bible. If god is supposedly the author of the bible, or at least inspired it, and god is the one who created this moral sense, why wasn't he consistent with what he deems moral (according to divine command theory, whatever god commands is moral)? Our human conscience (for most of us anyway) sees the persecution of homosexuals as cruel and wrong, and yet it is a law given in the book supposedly written/inspired by this same god.

A third stumbling block is the fact that god has never been proven. If god cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt then the most logical answer for our morality would be our biology and our culture.

A related point are people who claim to do helpful and harmful things because god supposedly told them to. Because there are people who have supposedly been told to commit both good and bad acts, this doesn't do anything to fix the contradictory messages that god seems to send (assuming he is real). There are people who feel compelled by god to help the poor, but there are also people who commit horrible atrocities, such as Dena Schlosser who chopped off her eleven month old girl's arms because god told her to.

Now, an apologist will likely say that Schlosser was clearly insane and god would never command someone to do such a thing. But if they dismiss this woman's testimony so quickly, why do they accept a christian's so easily, as long as they're doing something good? The simple answer? Bias.

Morality has nothing to do with god and, therefore, it cannot be used as any kind of "evidence" of god.


The Cosmological Argument:


The Cosmological argument has a few variations but ultimately it is the famed "first cause" argument. Theologians postulate that the universe cannot possibly be eternal and therefore something had to have brought it into existence. They call this thing god.

It can be broken down as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

There are a few major flaws with this. First, theologians assume that the universe can't be eternal; that it's impossible for the universe to just be, to just exist. Second, because of their claims that the universe cannot be eternal they then make a wild claim full of hypocrisy and nonsense and state that their god is eternal and does not need a cause. Third, they also assume that events that took place in the past could not go on indefinitely. But again, they contradict themselves and claim their god is infinite and has always existed, though they can never articulate "where" their god was or" what" he was doing the eternity before he just happened to create this universe. A related point is the fact that if the currently most widely accepted model of the big bang is one in which time didn't exist before the big bang, how could god exist in a "time" before time even existed? It's a contradiction. Fourth, with the Kalam Cosmological Argument claiming god has no beginning, thus needs no cause, they have no proof of this, and it's unknown if the universe even had a cause to begin with. The big bang we know of may have been just one out of countless "bangs" that have occurred throughout time, following Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok's theory.

Because of these facts and the lack of knowledge human beings have regarding the universe (though more is being learned through science; religion sure hasn't done anything to help out on the matter) no one truly knows if the universe is eternal or not (though there are some plausible scientific theories that state the universe could be eternal such as those endorsed by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, authors of the book Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang), but one thing is for sure, completely contradicting themselves in order to claim "god did it" is a completely bogus answer and leaves one to ask: "If nothing can be eternal, who made god?" Theologians have yet to come up with a reasonable answer that doesn't violate some scientific principal or use the bible for their proof, ahem, Ray Comfort.

The fact is, though, that there are things that happen at the subatomic level which appear to have no cause. "When an atom in an excited energy level drops to a lower level and emits a photon, a particle of light, we find no cause of that event. Similarly, no cause is evident in the decay of a radioactive nucleus" (Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor J. Stenger, page 124). So it seems it's known that things can happen without a cause, which would put to rest the entire cosmological argument at the beginning. Since it's known that some things happen without a cause then it's scientifically possible for the universe to have come about without some definite cause.

Even assuming that the universe wasn't eternal, and the previous research was flawed in some way, it's pretty presumptuous of them to claim their god did it. They have no proof. All they have is a book written by very superstitious individuals who didn't know what we do today about the world and how it works. How theists can claim this book that is full of oftentimes silly and cruel statements and stories tells us how the universe came to be is dumb founding.


Teleological Arguments:


Teleological arguments are arguments in which theists cite the apparent design and order in the universe as proof of a creator.

To quote Nichloas Everitt about this argument, "This argues from the fact that the universe is orderly, or displays regularities, to the conclusion that there must be a cosmic intelligence responsible for creating or imposing and maintaining the order."

As far as design, this implies intelligent design and creationism. Both of these arguments I've written about at some length so I will point you to other sources for that information.

Life shows evidence of evolution, not of being created:

Another "Gap" Is Found

Earth is not the only planet located in the "sweet spot" for life to thrive; it's also known for a fact that life can thrive even in immensely hot and cold temperatures:

Design in the Universe...There's No god Behind It!

More Evidence Against the "Design" Argument

Ignorance and More 'Design' Nonsense

A website that is excellent and handily debunks many claims of "design" and "order" is the TalkOrigins Archive (along with many other creationist and intelligent design lies and deceptions).

The fine-tuning argument suffers from the same lack of reasoning, lack of scientific knowledge, and "god of the gaps" thinking that dominate all arguments for the existence of god.

First of all, it seems that many numbers have been manipulated to make these constants seem extraordinary. Some examples are irrelevant. Victor J. Stenger says, "Many of the examples of fine-tuning found in theological literature suffer from simple misunderstandings of physics. For example, any references to the fine-tuning of constants like the speed of light,c, Planck's constant, h, or Newton's gravitational constant, G, are irrelevant since these are all arbitrary constants whose values simply define the system of units being used. Only 'dimensionless' numbers that do not depend on units, such as the ratio of the strengths of gravity and electromagnetism are meaningful.

Some of the 'remarkable precision' of physical parameters that people talk about is highly misleading because it depends on the choice of units. For example, theologian John Jefferson Davis asserts, 'If the mass of of neutrinos were 5 x 10 - 34 instead of 5 x 10- 35 kg [kilogram], because of their great abundance in the universe, the additional gravitational mass would result in a contracting rather than expanding universe.' This sounds like fine-tuning by one part in 10- 35. However, as philosopher Neil Manson points out, this is like saying that 'if he had been one part in 10- 16 of a light year shorter (that is, one meter shorter), Michael Jordan would not have been the word's greatest basketball player.....'

One of the many major flaws with most studies of the anthropic principle coincidences is that the investigators vary a single parameter while assuming all the others remain fixed. They further compound this mistake by proceeding to calculate meaningless probabilities based on the grossly erroneous assumptions that all the parameters are independent....

Physicist Anthony Aguire has independently examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are simultaneously varied by orders of magnitude, and found he could construct cosmologies in which 'stars, planets, and intelligent life can plausibly arise.' Physicist Craig Hogan has done another independent analysis that leads to similar conclusions. And, theoretical physicists at Kyoto University in Japan have shown that heavy elements needed for life will be present in even the earliest stars independent of what the exact parameters for star formation may have been" (Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis, pages 145 - 149).

Other theories seem to put the Anthropic Principle to rest, including possible multiple universes, and string theory. If our universe is just one out of many the chances are very good for different values in the universe to happen to be within the right parameters to facilitate life.

According to Gordon L. Kane, and associates, "In string theories all of the parameters of the theory - in particular all quark and lepton masses, and all coupling strength - are calculable, so there are parameters left to allow anthropic arguments... "

Even Stephen Hawking's more recent studies seem to cast doubt upon the Anthropic Principle. "He proposed that our universe is much less 'special' than the proponents of the Anthropic Principle claim it is. According to Hawking, there is a 98 percent chance that a universe of a type as our own will come from the Big Bang [emphasis in original]. Further, using the basic wave function of the universe as a basis, Hawking's equations indicate that such a universe can come into existence without relation to anything prior to it, meaning that it could come out of nothing" (Source: Did Man Create God?, by David E. Comings, M.D., page 272).

Because physics and cosmology are not my strong suit I suggest reading Victor J. Stenger's book dealing in much detail with many of these arguments.

One of the best arguments I've heard against the anthropic principle isn't scientific arguments, but one that just relies on pure logic. If the universe wasn't suitable for life we wouldn't have evolved to witness it! Proof of our being here is no proof of any designer or creator.

After giving the previous examples of false reasoning and evidence that proves several of the fine-tuning and design arguments incorrect, I think it stands to reason that most others are just as faulty. That's something I've noticed about theists' arguments. After you debunk one they throw another argument out at you; you then successfully debunk it, and so it goes again and again. It would be nearly impossible to catalogue each and every single argument ever used, but again, if a majority are found wanting then most likely the others are as well. Especially since their beliefs oftentimes blind them from seeing the truth anyway, they won't give up until they find something you cannot effectively answer. Then they'll raise their arms in victory (after about a thousand wrong arguments in a row), but once again, the gaps in our knowledge is really the only avenue theists have for arguing their god. If that's the case they really have no arguments at all.


Appeals to Miracles:


I find the use of miracles to be one of the most absurd "proofs" of god's existence. It is once again a "god of the gaps" argument: because we don't understand precisely how someone may have been healed, it was a miracle. Most of these are far and few between. For example, in Richard Dawkins' two part series called The Root of All Evil? Part 1, it was said how within the last century and a half there were "sixty-six declared miracles" to have taken place out of the yearly 80,000 people who go a pool of water where the virgin marry is said to have appeared. Obviously not anywhere close to a significant percentage to declare any genuine miracles.

Other than this example, the failure rate of prayer is another devastating blow to the theologian. I've gone over this evidence in the past, along with other arguments against the supernatural, and those are located here.

Instead of trying to debate whether or not miracles exist I try to argue against the entire concept of the supernatural, or the existence of an immaterial world. If it cannot be reasonably shown that the supernatural exists, then no miracle could possibly occur. I have given several challenges for anyone to give me unbiased evidence (no personal accounts, secondhand stories) of the supernatural. No one has been able to present any evidence, nor debunk my two papers Evidence Against the Supernatural, parts 1 and 2.

The fact of the matter is that there have been many people have have experienced "something" in their lives they cannot explain but it seems that the mind is wired for personification and people apply human traits to objects and events. People tend to "see" something intervene in their lives if it goes the way they want; if their prayer was answered, if someone's injuries are healed all of a sudden, if a disease disappears. Again, just because these events occur doesn't even imply the existence of god! What if it was some other being that humans have never discovered? What if it was a different god? What if there were laws of nature that we haven't discovered yet and that's what was responsible for such and such event occurring? If these things happened due to this unknown law of nature, then it couldn't be considered a miracle nor supernatural.

There are countless examples of this throughout history. It's not a stretch of the imagination to any degree to think that these current claims of some supernatural agency are just as likely to be false as the ones that happened in the past. Because of the many natural events that took place in the past, lightning, wind, and other forces, human beings were sure to give these events human traits and think "something" caused them to happen. It's only with our more advanced knowledge do we know how wind and other natural disasters happen. No doubt the same will take place with certain instances of a medical "miracle" or other such events in the future.


Religious Experiences:


In this final section, I will attempt to argue why I think religious experiences aren't any form of evidence for god, let alone the supernatural, because of the large body of research which shows that these experiences are happening at the level of the brain only, and most religious experiences have been duplicated in subjects when certain areas of the brain are stimulated.

Mostly performed on epilepsy patients these tests confirm that when the temporal lobes, amygdala and hippocampus are stimulated many different experiences take place. Everything from out of body experiences, deja vu, a feeling of not being in this world, hearing voices, feeling a presence, etc.

In fact, one man who had been diagnosed with left temporal lobe epilepsy, his brain was stimulated at the point of the inferior temporal lobe and at this time he exclaimed, "I'm going to die." When he was asked if he saw anything, he replied, "No, God said I am going to die."

One case reported that while a man's brain was stimulated in the right superior surface of the temporal lobe he had an out of body experience. He exclaimed, "Oh God! I am leaving my body!"

In a case with a twenty-five year old woman who had TLE (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy), an MRI showed a right-sided, mesial temporal focus and hippocampal sclerosis. The auras, seizures, and religious thoughts she was experiencing were almost completely eliminated after the removal of the right amygdala and hippocampus.

In 1997 Vilayanur Ramachandran developed the idea of "The God Module" when studying epilepsy patients. During the experiments one subject with TLE felt a "oneness with the Creator" and others made statements like, "I finally understand what it is all about..."

Other experiences elicited feelings of a god and feeling as if they were "filled with the spirit" and felt the presence of god (Source: Did Man Create God?, by David E. Comings, M.D., pages 347, 349, 354, 355, 362).

This is only a tiny fraction of the experiments and examples of this kind of experiment. Direct stimulation of the temporal lobes seem to consistently bring out spiritual and religious thoughts, feelings, and visions.

This seems to be bedrock evidence that all of these religious experiences are caused completely at the level of the brain and humanities' experiences of god and spirituality are truly just in our heads.

Obviously religious believers would likely respond that this is proof of a god; that god placed these parts of our brains inside us so we might be aware of his presence. It's an interesting hypothesis, but I don't see how that's possible. god supposedly will send his creations to hell dependant upon if they believe or not based on some clue he left in our brains that might or might not give us the sensations of his presence. That's like rolling the dice and whoever gets a certain number gets themselves engulfed in flames, and others get "saved" just by the luck of the throw. Not a very kind thing to do in my opinion (of course theists always have silly excuses for the cruel acts of their god).

Another problem with this is the fact that this "spiritual feeling" one might characterize as "god" just points us to a belief in "something out there" that's bigger than us; points to ghosts, fairies, and a multitude of gods. If this belief was truly put in place by the one true god (according to christians) then why do humans have such a variety of beliefs about spiritual agents and gods? Wouldn't god implant a belief that just included him if he is the one and only true god in existence, if it was him, and only him, he wanted his creations to worship?

Based on this evidence, it seems clear to me that this "spiritual feeling" does not point to any god; the god a person believes in depends upon the culture they grow up in, and is not "hardwired" into our minds; it is only this vague spiritual belief that is hardwired (possibly for survival purposes and to cope with the fear of death) and humans built upon these vague, innate beliefs by making up everything else about these various spiritual agencies.

Because there is no evidence of any gods the most likely explanation is that these experiences caused the belief in gods and not the other way around.


Conclusion:


I'm sure there are many apologists who may feel as if I've created strawmen arguments, or did not represent all theological views during this discussion. I would argue strongly that I created no strawmen; I consulted the books of philosophers and ex-theologians such as John Loftus in representing the arguments of theists (and arguing against).

I also think it would be a near impossible task to present every theological argument, or variation of those arguments. I tried to pick the most common ones and go from there. Besides, most arguments are variations upon a basic theme anyhow, so if I debunked a major argument I likely debunked its variations as well.

It's sad that the a large majority of the human race must feel it has to lie to itself for whatever reasons it has for believing in some higher power or god. What it ultimately amounts to is ignoring and/or distorting evidence, and having a preconceived bias that leads you to believe in your god (while disbelieving in everyone else's for the same reasons they don't believe in yours!). This is surely the case with many believers and one such example is the christian apologist William Lane Craig, as told from John Loftus' book Why I Became an Atheist (page 214):

"Mark Smith (of www.jcnot4me.com) set up the following scenario for Craig: 'Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let's pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection - Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.'

Smith asked Craig, given this scenario, if he would then give up Christianity, having seen with his own two eyes that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Smith wrote: 'His answer was shocking, and quite unexpected. He told me, face to face, that he would STILL believe in Jesus, he would STILL believe in the resurrection, and he would STILL remain a Christian. When asked, in light of his being a personal eyewitness to the fact that there WAS no resurrection, he replied that due to the witness of the 'holy spirit' within him, he would assume a trick of some sort had been played on him while watching Jesus' tomb. This self-induced blindness astounded me.'"

There is no evidence of god in our biology, in the cosmos, nor within our uses of logic. This is why I often make the claim that there is no evidence for god, as I did here, in the review of the first chapter, despite these arguments being held up as such. I've even been insulted because of this view (though no one has yet to offer one argument against my position).

Because of the facts and logic that I have presented I see no reason to believe in any god. There are miles wide, gaping holes in every single argument ever put forth for a god and these arguments will only get weaker as science discovers more and more about the universe and us.

It is precisely for this reason that I consider christian apologetics to be a huge pile of bullshit, and half ass attempts by unenlightened and superstitious individuals to convince themselves that they aren't going to die.


UPDATE 4-3-09

It has come to my attention that some of Victor J. Stenger's statements that I cited may be false, but as with just about everything I write I usually think two or three steps ahead of any possible detractors, which is why I stated the following in the above post:

Even assuming that the universe wasn't eternal, and the previous research was flawed in some way, it's pretty presumptuous of them to claim their god did it. They have no proof. All they have is a book written by very superstitious individuals who didn't know what we do today about the world and how it works. How theists can claim this book that is full of oftentimes silly and cruel statements and stories tells us how the universe came to be is dumb founding.

I said this because I am well aware of the fluid nature of science. As more data is collected old theories are put to rest and are replaced with new ones that fit the data better. Because of the non static nature of science you can't always count on everything being completely accurate at all times, especially in the fast moving world of cosmology where they're finding new things at a fairly fast pace. There is also a lot of disagreement among scientists so to proclaim Stenger as the ultimate authority would be foolish. Of course he could be wrong (and as someone has informed me, he very well could be) and I don't deny that, but because he is wrong does nothing to my case. It's still no proof of a god and where I cited Stenger was just a small part of my argument.

As I tried to show throughout the post, all arguments for god are nothing more than "god of the gap" arguments: because theists are at a loss to explain something we don't yet understand or something miraculous, they wish to subscribe a god to plug the "gaps" in our knowledge. But, this is severely logically flawed way of thinking because theists are also at a loss to explain their god. They just assume their god exists and that it's necessary to have this "uncaused cause" to cause the universe. That's preposterous and contradictory to say the least. I might as well say that some leprechaun caused the universe because it's utilizing the exact same flawed reasoning.

The overall premises of my arguments stand untouched and thus far unrefuted. All arguments for god are nothing more than illogical attempts to plug "gaps" in our knowledge and that's that. That's no more "proof" of a god than me trying to explain how my sandwich disappeared by claiming the tooth fairy got hungry.

UPDATE 4-6-09

I've responded to a few criticisms (though they are mostly misunderstandings and pure ignorance) by one Joe Hinman, who tries, but fails miserably, to rebut any of my above arguments. I respond to his claims here.

UPDATE 4-21-09

I created a post pointing out errors in a christian apologists' arguments against my claim that all arguments for god are nothing more than "god of the gap" arguments. Click here to read it.

UPDATE 5-28-10

I recently finished writing a rebuttal to several of famed Christian apologist William Lane Craig's arguments for god. Some are repeated from this paper, but there is some new stuff in the new one that you might find interesting as well. It can be found here.