Not feeling the power: SJ takes on prayer

Objection number 4 is that prayer doesn’t work.

My original: Enough children have died in faith-healing cases to show that prayer only succeeds in mundane cases with a high likelihood of occurring anyway. There is no evidence at the ‘population-level that Christians are healthier, live longer or recover from cancer more frequently.

This is specific to the Christian god because this deity is supposed to be intercessory.  It supposed to intervene when its fan club needs help.  So even accepting that this deity may have good reasons to let someone die from disease, we would still be expect intercessions to be frequent enough to be detectable at some statistical level (and peculiar to Christians). 

If you like, this is a variation of the 'why doesn't god cure amputees' objection. Except it involves children. 

Where's the counter-evidence?

 

S.J. Thomason responds:

The reason there may be little or no evidence at the population-level that Christians are healthier, live longer, or recover from cancer more frequently is not because God does not answer prayers. In contrast, God always answers prayers, but the answers may not be to improve health or prolong life. 

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. The claim of Christianity is that prayer obtains what the petitioner asks for, especially in the area of health. See the sample of bible quotes below.  There's not the caveat present that SJ has conjured. 

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14:13-14.

Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive. -Matthew 21:22

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. John 16:24

they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. Mark 16:18

Lord my god, I called to you for help, and you healed me. Psalm 30:2

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. Mark 8:13

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:34

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16

He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

In Acts 3 episodes of faith healed are alleged to have occurred (4:22, 5:12-16; and 20:7-12).

There's a reason why faith healing is practiced in some Christian sects! 

The answers always correspond to developing a relationship with us and advancing the fulfillment of our spiritual purposes or the spiritual purposes of our loved ones. If our spiritual purposes have been fulfilled, then our time on this planet is over and God calls us into heaven.

 This is an example of the ad hoc rescue fallacy- or the Making Stuff Up fallacy.   God answers prayers. This should produce shifts in life expectancy or mortality from diseases like cancer among Christians. SJ has employed an ad hoc trick to rescue the original claim. It's not a good ad hoc device as it demands that I accept there is now a spiritual dimension and afterlife, in addition to there being a god. This isn't resolving the problem, it's multiplying the challenges.

Changing the subject

Sometimes He calls the very best among us into heaven, which is always painful for those left behind,

God answers prayers in a capricious, unpredictable and hurtful way.  That's how we know he loves us and answers our prayers (rolls eyes).  This isn't a rebuttal. This is conceding my objection is correct.

yet His purpose is to grow His relationship with those left behind and He places us in a variety of challenging circumstances to do just that.

This is obscene.Your god is purposely killing people to make the survivors love him.

As George MacDonald said and I’ll paraphrase: Imagine yourself as a house. God helps you to fix its drains, repair its cracks, and refurbish its appliances. You needed this help, so you’re not surprised. But imagine your surprise when God starts knocking down walls, putting in new kitchens and baths, and adding bedrooms and room additions. It hurts abominably and you wonder what on earth he’s up to. You thought you were going to be a decent little cottage. But he had plans for a palace, one in which He plans to live himself. You see, he wants you to be perfect, just as he is perfect, and humble and kind, just as he is humble and kind.

Platitudinous nonsense and a false analogy fallacy.  Lets consider reality.

Dr Asser found that between 1975 and 1995, 172 children died following faith healing in USA (Pediatrics 1998: 10). In one case, a 2-year-old girl choked to death on a banana- over an hour- while her parents and other adults present simply prayed. 

That 2-year old didn't grow up to be a "palace" or humble and kind. She didn't enjoy development, including spiritual- because she died.  She died because her parents believed that there was a god, and it did answer prayer. She died because there are still adults today who think a bunch of ancient slave-owners had a direct line of communication to the alleged creator of the universe.   And if your god exists, it was both present at that crisis and culpable in that death.  

She died because of a fucking banana! Because her parents thought begging their god for help would be more effective than dislodging a piece of fruit.  Because for 2000 years Christians have promoted the lie that there is a god and it does answer prayers.  

 

And if you want to try the 'she's in heaven now' line, you'd better have a signed, witnessed affidavit from her attesting to the truth of that claim.

Over the past five years, I have lost two good friends to cancer: one never smoked cigarettes, yet one day discovered she had stage four single cell lung cancer; a second discovered one day she had stage four brain cancer stemming from the melanoma she battled over a decade earlier. Both left behind a husband and an adopted child. In the first case, the husband passed a few months later, likely of a broken heart.

Not exactly good evidence that god answers prayer really, is it?
 

These two young mothers were extraordinarily kind and by anyone’s standards would be considered rather perfect people. No explanation of their deaths can offer their loved ones comfort, save for the explanation that they completed their lives’ missions and are now with God in heaven.

That hardly makes it true. 

Look at my bright, shiny red herring!

Before atheists jump to their feet here with accusations of the argument from ignorance fallacy, let us consider our purpose in life. Why are we here? What purpose do we serve? What does God want us to do?

This is getting a long way off topic.  And it's a set of loaded questions.
 

According to Rick Warren in his book The Purpose-Driven Life, “God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, He depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than He depends on our reading the Bible…Jesus warned us that we would have problems in this world. No one is immune to pain or insulated from suffering, and no one gets to skate through life problem-free. Life is a series of problems…God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself (p. 193-194).

 Platitudinous rubbish. Asinine and vacuous rhetoric.The children who die in faith healing cases aren't having their character develop. The only way they're becoming like Jesus is by being dead. 

Summary

Apparently God always answers prayers but not in a way we can predict, measure or makes sense to us. As a rebuttal goes, it's another complete fail.  A god that can watch a 2 year old girl choke to death on a banana and ignore the pleas of her parents to help, either doesn't exist or isn't a loving, intercessory moral entity.
 

Will the real JC stand up? SJ takes on the gospels

The Third Objection

My third objection was basically the poor evidence for the gospel Jesus. Given what it is possible to preserve or record for historical figures, what we have for the gospel Jesus is actually quite lacking.  I've used Julius Caesar as my benchmark, as despite being a minor historical character by Christian standards, we seem to have some quite good records.

To stop things getting too tedious, I've summarised the responses from Stephanie here:

The Tally Sheet

Objection	SJ Rebuttal	Analysis
...the gospels written well after the alleged events	Though scholars disagree on the precise dates in which the gospels were written due to their presuppositions, we have good evidence to suggest that the vast majority of the New Testament was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D…	That we have difficulty identifying even when the gospels are written is prima facie evidence they’re problematic! Mark is typically dated at 65-70 CE, Luke and Matthew 80-85 CE and John 90-100 CE. However you want to look at it, the gospels are composed 1-3 generations later than the alleged life of Jesus.
…they contradict each other in key details. The nativity of Luke and Mark Matthew describe entirely different events. (Oops, why did I write Mark?)	Next, I will turn to Kaimatai’s assertion that the gospels contradict one another. The gospels do not contradict one another on the most important points related to Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. … J. Warner Wallace examined the gospel accounts forensically, applying his years of work as a police detective to good use.* He states, “The accounts puzzled together just the way one would expect from independent eyewitnesses. When one gospel eyewitness described an event and left out a detail that raised a question, this question was unintentionally answered by another gospel writer (who, by the way, often left out a detail that was provided by the first gospel writer).” Some of the many examples Wallace provides are as follows: (deleted as not germane)	Red Herring Fallacy The nativity contradiction is not addressed. This is a key detail. The virgin birth and alleged divine origin of Jesus is important.  The nativity stories have Jesus born once, on two occasions, years apart!   False Authority Fallacy Alert! Wallace is not an historian. To pretend the gospel accounts are from independent eyewitnesses is every colour of stupid. They are hearsay accounts.  They’re not independent either. The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) all share the same source material! (Oh, and the resurrection stories have major problems)
Unlike Julius Caesar there are no writings of Jesus (Even Julius Caesar left stuff he wrote)	ignored	Not only did Caesar write the Gallic Wars, his authorship is confirmed in the contemporaneous letters of Cicero.  The battlefield of Alesia has been excavated and conforms to his account.
No contemporaneous historian, of which there were several in this era, noticed any of the fantastic things described in the gospels	ignored	Even later historians (Tacitus etc) who wrote much later, cannot corroborate the extraordinary stories of the gospels.
One feels an omniscient (all-knowing) deity would know this would reduce the confidence non-believers would have in the Jesus-mission	ignored

* Parenthetically, forensic techniques are employed when an event is know to have occurred. Like a murder. The life of the gospel Jesus (and I carefully say this to separate it from a possible historical Jesus) is a disputed event.  It's not a known event.  There's no point synthesising say, the different accounts of the resurrection, if the resurrection never happened.

Summary

There's not any way you can say my objections have been satisfied. This thing of just avoiding what I write and throw a lot of bible-talk at me, isn't how rebuttals work. It's just fail from start to finish.

Julius Caesar provides us with a good benchmark of what is possible. For an individual who is supposed to be more important than Caesar (at least according to Christianity), it's reasonable to expect something as good.  Julius Caesar gives us his own writing, confirmation from contemporaneous sources (like Cicero) and backings from archaeology (Alesia).  This just does not happen for the gospel Jesus.

Caesar also was recognised as a god in the Roman pantheon. This tells us that in ancient times, people had a low bar for what could be a deity.  That the claim to divinity was common. 

Soapy Red Herrings: SJ takes on soap

By now I was starting to suspect that S.J. Thomason would keep dodging my points and mask my objections in a morass of unrelated talking points.  Let's see how she handled my second objection. This was the absence of instructions on soap.  The keyword here was instructions as knowledge of soap was present in the ancient world. 

The Soap Test

My original- There are no instructions on using soap. ... With no technological barrier to making soap, there is no valid reason to withhold instructions on its use. Given the vast number of people whose lives would have been improved by providing instructions, it’s not a trivial issue.

When we used to visit (my very departed) grandparents, they always insisted we wash our hands with soap before every meal. For people who grew up without antibiotics, they had no illusions about disease spread.  Similarly, my work-organisation has a lot of people working together.  There are posters in every bathroom, explaining how to wash your hands properly with soap, how long to wash for, and why.  Even in modern societies we invest time and resources into providing instructions on using soap.

For a pre-Industrial society, there is not much else you could do to improve welfare than insist on the use of soap.  It's a known product, it's easy to manufacture, and it greatly limits the infection and the spread of disease.  And the OT reveals that their ancient deity was concerned preventing the spread of diseases.  Heck, even the instructions on treating mildew go on and on.  
 

Fishing for Red Herrings

S.J. Thomason responds:

While I agree that soap is important, I offer what organizations producing soap suggest is its history. According to the Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company, “Although no one really knows when soap was discovered, there are various legends surrounding its beginning. According to Roman legend, soap was named after Mount Sapo, an ancient site of animal sacrifices. After an animal sacrifice, rain would wash animal fat and ash that collected under the ceremonial altars, down to the banks of the Tiber River. Women washing clothes in the river noticed that if they washed their clothes in certain parts of the river after a heavy rain their clothes were much cleaner. Thus the emergence of the first soap – or at least the first use of soap. A soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient Babylon is evidence that soap-making was known as early as 2800 B.C. Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, a soap-making method.”
According to Soap History, “An excavation of ancient Babylon revealed evidence that Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. Babylonians were the first one to master the art of soap making. They made soap from fats boiled with ashes. Soap was used in cleaning wool and cotton used in textile manufacture and was used medicinally for at least 5000 years. The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 B.C.) reveals that the ancient Egyptians mixed animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to produce a soap-like substance. According the Pliny the Elder, the Phoenicians used goat’s tallow and wood ashes to create soap in 600 B.C. Early Romans made soaps in the first century A.D. from urine and soap was widely known in the Roman Empire.”

I like that the description above excludes the one ancient culture we're discussing. That is, Ancient Israel.  Nor is it relevant to finding either instructions on its use, or rationalising why those instruction are absent.
 

Biblical scholars have further referred to several passages to suggest that soap is indeed present in the Bible in the recognized form of its day.
Malachi 3:2: “But who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.”
Jeremiah 2:22: “Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder…”

Except these aren't instructions on its use.  Jeremiah is actually disparaging! 

In summary, the people in Biblical times were using soap, though the soap varied in content from what we use today, just as medicines and vaccines available today were not available in Biblical times. Today’s soaps have come about just as God intended them to come about; no sooner and no later.

Yes, we know they knew about soap. Other cultures invented it!  It's easy to make. There's a reason I've highlighted soap and not say, penicillin or insulin. It was a product that actually existed in that era! 

There are no instructions on using it to hinder the spread of disease or prevent infection.  That was my objection.

Summary

Me: there are no instructions on using soap for health reasons
SJ: But a ha... they knew soap existed! I have defeated your objection by ignoring it completely!
Me: Do you know how rebuttals actually work?

They call him Mr Fantastic: SJ builds a strawman

The SJ Thomason response continues.

And What A Strawman She Made!

Kaimatai’s next arguments suggest that the world is lacking evidence of Jesus. 

 Actually my objection was "Other civilizations should have noticed the extraordinary events described in the bible.  That evidence is just not present."

Let's consider what that might be- the Sun standing still, global floods, an entire nation's first-born being killed in one night, ancient Judaean carpenters coming back to life, the dead rising and visiting Jerusalem etc.

A conspicuous feature of this objection was no mention of Jesus by the way.  This doesn't augur well.

Such an assertion could not be further from the truth. Christianity, which 2.2 billion people currently practice globally, began with the humble work of the son of a carpenter, several fishermen, a tent maker, a tax collector, and others of little means. The very fact that such a group was able to convince millions to embrace Christianity and worship illegally and without any power or riches from 33 A.D. to 312 A.D. suggests something extraordinary is working behind the scenes.

 Right... because all the other major religions began when thousands and thousands of people just happened to start worshipping their god at the same time. Isn't 'small beginnings' the usual way for religions to start?  Also I'm unpersuaded that Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire for most of its history.

Onward- do we have any evidence other civilisations around Ancient Judaea and Israel noticed  anything extraordinary?

Oh boy...

I’ve paraphrased a story about Jesus by James Allan Francis (Turek, 2014) to demonstrate just how extraordinary the transformation of Christianity is.
He grew up in a village, the child of a peasant, and worked as a carpenter. He never had a family, owned a home, or went to college. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion rode against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
“Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the enemies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned – put together – have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.”
I anticipate atheists will say at this point that I’ve violated the ad populum fallacy, which is the appeal to the popularity of a claim as a reason for accepting it. I therefore return to the initial reasons behind the growth of Christianity to refute this argument. The first martyr, St. Stephen, heads up this discussion.
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered Him – you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it” (Acts 7: 51-53).
“When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory and God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:54-56).
“At this, they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul (Acts 7:57-58).
While on the road to Damascus breathing murderous threats towards Christians, Saul encountered Jesus. “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 9: 3-6).
Saul became Paul, who wrote at least six books of the New Testament and endured much persecution before being beheaded under the leadership of the Roman Emperor Nero. The book of Acts and 1 Timothy 4:6-8 suggests Paul knew that his death was imminent, though his death was not reported in the Bible.
Extrabiblically, in 1 Clement 5: 5-7 (c. A.D. 95-96), the writer notes that Paul suffered tremendously before being “set free from this world and transported up to a holy place, having become the greatest example of endurance” (McDowell, 2015). “Other early evidences for the martyrdom of Paul can be found in Ignatius (Letter to the Ephesians 12:2), Polycarp (Letter to the Philippians 9:1-2), Dionysius of Corinth (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.25.4), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1.1), The Acts of Paul, and Tertullian” (Scorpiace 15:5-6) (McDowell, 2015).
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:25-26: “Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers.”
Some atheists claim Paul never saw Jesus, yet he makes it quite clear that he did. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (1 Corinthians15: 1-8).
The third example is Jesus’ brother James. While James didn’t provide us with evidence of his belief in Jesus’ divinity during Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:20; John 7:5), he saw the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7) and accordingly, became a believer and key leader in the early church (Galatians 2:9; Acts 21:17-26).
In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus states that James was stoned. “Two other Christian accounts also confirm the martyrdom of James, even if they differ over the details. Hegesippus provides a detailed account in Book 5 of his Memoirs (Hypomnemata), which have been preserved in Eusebius. And Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150-215) also provides an account of the fate of James in the seventh book of his Hypotyposes, as recorded by Eusebius” (Ecclesiastical History 2.1.4b-5) (McDowell, 2015).
Based on these accounts, we know that among many Christian disciples (1) Stephen, Paul, and James sincerely believed in Jesus’ divinity; (2) they knowingly risked their lives to preach His Good Word; and (3) they died gory deaths due to their beliefs and practices. 

Insert snoring sounds... wait, we're done...phew!

SummaryThey call him Mr fantastic

 What a waste of time.  Another complete fail.  A fantastic strawman fallacy is constructed and not once, is my objection addressed. 

Never mind the Punc Eq, where's Adam and Eve?: SJ takes on genetics

I've had a lengthy response to my objections to Christianity from SJ Thomason. Rather than analysing it in one go, I'm going to break this down into smaller (and hopefully more readable formats).

The Red Herring

S.J. Thomason responds:

Let me begin by noting his reference to the flavor of Christianity. I draw attention to this statement because atheists often ask Christians to identify the “correct” Christian sect. I am of the opinion that so long as the Christian sect draws its knowledge from the Bible, embraces Jesus Christ’s divinity, and encourages people to live by the example of Jesus Christ, then the sect is correct.

This is a red herring. It would be relevant to state whether the belief in Adam and Eve in the sect the reader belongs to, are supposed to literally exist, or exist as allegories instead.

People have varying needs in the ways they grow closer to God. 

 The rest of this paragraph has nothing to do with the genetics problem. It's a description of SJ Thomason's beliefs. This suffers the defects of being irrelevant to my objection, and is boring. 

Some prefer liturgical, ritualistic churches in which the congregation sings hymns and develops an appreciation of sacraments and traditions, such as the Lutheran and Catholic churches. Others might prefer contemporary sorts of churches in which the congregation sings contemporary Christian songs and listens to informative sermons on the Bible, such as the Baptist church. Other churches blend these options and offer various interpretations of the Bible based on variations of adherence to literal interpretations of the Bible. No matter the door, all ultimately lead to Jesus. “The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will be open at last” (Lewis, 1949).

The Strawman Fallacy

To answer Kaimatai’s next issue, which speaks to the origins of the universe, earth, and life on earth, I draw from Hugh Ross and his book Improbable Planet.

And straight to the strawman fallacy.  I gave as a specific example that genetics refuted that a literal Adam and Eve existed.  These are examples of an absence of evidence where there should be evidence.

“The Milky Way Galaxy, the Sun, the Moon, and the configuration of the solar system’s planets and asteroid belts reveal how Earth obtained its unique stockpile of elements and minerals that enable Earth today to sustain such an enormous biomass and biodiversity. The fossil record, isotope records, geological layers, sediment cores, ice cores, and biodeposit (biological decay products embedded in Earth’s crust) inventories provide biologists and ecologists with a chronicle of Earth’s life. Earth’s preserved record of past physical and biological events reveals an unanticipated synergy (p. 16-17).”

The conspicuous feature of the paragraph is the absence of any mention of genetics.  It's irrelevant.

“Charles Darwin presumed that the development and transformation of life throughout Earth’s history was gradual, smooth, and continuous. 

 That was in 1859.  And it was a hypothesis, that even some of his supporters (like Huxley) remained unconvinced by.  By the early 1950s, the development of population biology and speciation modes like allopatric speciation, had undermined this gradualistic view.  It persisted longer in paleontology however. 

The Appeal to (False) Authority

However, in landmark articles published in 1972 and 1977, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that the fossil record is typified by species remaining in extended stasis (little or no net evolutionary change) interrupted by quantum jumps where species suddenly disappear and then are followed quickly by sudden appearances of very different species

Correct, as a necessary consequence of speciation beginning from small populations, where the odds of leaving fossils behind are very unlikely because the populations are too small! Not because evolution works by jumps.   And we have plenty of good examples of gradual change occurring in the fossil record.

This argument is completely fallacious. Ross isn't an evolutionary biologist, or geneticist, or paleontologist.  He's a physicist. He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. 

…It is not only at the species level where quantum jumps are observed but also at the level of families, orders, and classes of organisms (p. 19).

I'm sorry, but what did I just read!?  Pretty much all terrestrial animals are just one thing. A segmented worm-like creature with optional appendages.  We're bilateral triploblasts.  There aren't "quantum leaps". Just some tinkering with an animal with a feeding tube that runs down the centre.

“Primitive life, that is unicellular bacterial life, is but the simplest form of life on Earth. There are three other general divisions of purely physical life: (1) differentiated multicellular organisms (for example, fungi); (2) plants; and (3) animals. 

 Oh the stupid just burns now. There are three domains of life. The three divisions mentioned here make up just one of them. I know Ross is old, but it looks like he learned his biology from Darwin himself.

In addition to purely physical life, Earth today contains two kinds of life that possess distinctly nonphysical attributes. One of these kinds is a group of animals that possess a mind…that is capable of experiencing and expressing emotions, exercising intellectual analysis, and making decisions in response to that analysis and the animal’s emotional state. All mind-possessing animals share in common the attribute of parents providing sacrificial care for their offspring. Animals in this category include all mammals and birds and a few of the more advanced reptilian species such as the crocodile and the alligator” (p. 21).

 Sigh, "advanced" is not a thing in biology.

Putting the Cart before the Horse

“Another kind of life-form possessing nonphysical attributes is the species Homo sapiens sapiens. Human beings not only possess a mind, but they are also endowed with a spirit…(which) enables humans to engage in philosophy and theology and to address questions of ultimate meaning and purpose” (p. 21).

 The claim we have a spirit is a religious one. As it is embedded in the god-belief, which is disputed, the argument is a fallacious 'affirming the consequent'. Ross is putting the cart-before-the-horse. 

Again, this is irrelevant to my objection, and is resorting to an appeal to (false) authority. 

Argument by Assertion Fallacy

In other words, the earth today contains diverse and abundant species in multiple levels of advanced life, many of which appeared suddenly via quantum jumps. Such an explanation helps to explain the way the most advanced life forms possess consciousness (i.e., awareness) and spirituality, while less advanced life forms do not. Such an explanation further suggests that the first humans appeared suddenly.

1. 1. There's no such thing as more or less advanced in biology. Organisms can have basal or derived characters.  The idea of 'advancement' is a religious relic based on the Scalae Naturae. It does not exist. 
2. 2. Molecular evidence shows that species don't appear in sudden leaps. Fossils are a function of population abundance. Species that originate with low populations leave few or no fossils. Molecular evidence shows that we don't see leaps. 
1.  The decoding of the mouse genome showed that over 99% of the coding genes in a mouse and a human were the same.  A 1% change of over 65-75my isn't a jump.
3. Humans didn't appear suddenly.  That's what the genetic evidence tells us. 

Final Score

So as far as a rebuttal goes, it's a complete fail. 

•  The genetic evidence against a recent human origin from two individuals was not addressed. No evidence from the field of genetics was even produced!
• A strawman argument was conjured in its place
• An appeal to authority was attempted, but the authority was ignorant of the topic at hand!
• Assertions were frequently just wrong.

That Kalam argument

Sooner or later as an atheist on the web, you're going to run into the Cosmological Argument.  This often comes in the form of the "Kalam argument" or its modern form promoted by William Craig.

It's typically presented as a syllogism. This a logical argument that used two related premises to reach a conclusion.

• P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause;
• P2: The universe began to exist;
• C: The universe has a cause

A Rapidly Inflating Singularity Explains Many of the Attributes of this Universe

(Figure via Shutterstock as Stock illustration ID: 489781135)


As the argument does not include any deities, it is imputed that this cause, must itself be uncaused.  Conveniently theists knew what this cause was all along. This is their favourite deity, which by fiat is eternal, existing outside time and space and, uncaused.

The popularity of the syllogism doesn't disguise its flaws.  It is these flaws that have prevented a stampede of atheists toward Christianity.  Let me elaborate.

A syllogism depends on the its premises being correct.  It is not good enough for them to be possibly correct.  And there are reasons to suspect the premises are not.

Let's look at the first.

How do we know that everything that begins to exist has a cause?

• The reason we have the qualification "begins to exist" is to exclude deities with eternal properties.  If it was just 'exists' then the syllogism would net in gods too.  In short, it is a special pleading fallacy introduced right at the start.  How do we know deities are able to exist without a beginning?  We don't.  No evidence is attached to prove this.  It's just one more thing we have to believe about gods on faith alone.
• It's an uncertain premise.  From what we understand about quantum mechanics, the quantum world behaves stochastically.  It's a random world at that level. Negative and positive sub-atomic particles wink in and out of existence. 
• The above means that P1 is not self-evident
• Induction is not strong enough to prove that P1 is correct. We've sampled a tiny fraction of the universe and our observed sample size of universes is still stuck at 1. 
• It makes the term 'cause' do a lot of work. Here the syllogism tries to conflate causality (in the sense of purposely caused by an agent) with other causality in other contexts (e.g. occurs naturally without intercession because of environment and natural laws). As a term, causes are not really part of the conceptual toolbox of Fundamental Physics.  I'm not convinced at this level, cause is an appropriate term.
• It is also a category fallacy. Universes don't fall into the same category as phenomenon within the universe.  
• Similarly, it's not clear what we mean by 'begins to exist'. If time is an emergent property of the universe, then it becomes difficult to talk about a point where the universe 'begins to exist' (see the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary condition).  

In short, P1 is a barely coherent and fallacious premise that has significant scientific objections to overcome.

How do we know the universe began to exist?

We don't. The standard model of the universe converges to a singularity, where the regular laws of physics as we understand them don't apply.  This could be a genuine beginning, or it could be just the observable part of other ways the universe evolved. 

Alternatives include a bouncing universe (our universe originated on another one that collapsed, before bouncing back from a singularity), cyclical (the various ekpyrotic models), reproducing from others etc.  

P2 has yet to be proven to be true.

Does the Universe Have Cause?  

 

In the sense that some event occurred that initiated an inflationary period for the universe? That seems plausible. For instance, some quantum event is potentially able to cause this.  Does that mean we know that this is how it happened?  No.  But there are natural explanations.  We don't have to invoke gods, and I'm not sure why we would.  What falsifiable hypotheses could we test? What predictions does this make?  The scientific model predicts a flat, homogeneous universe with Cosmic Background Microwave radiation. The divine model predicts a bloodgod who is outwitted by a talking snake, so that he has to mate with a virgin to kill his own offspring because two people ate some fruit.  It's not a good way to build credence.

Gods have a problem as they're not mentioned in the syllogism, and as the syllogism is attempting to prove gods exist, it's not an independent proof of said gods. We do know say, that quantum perturbations do happen. The syllogism for gods starts becoming a little circular at this point.

This lack of evidence for gods makes the whole syllogism unconvincing.  

Summary: Syllogisms aren't Evidence

Syllogisms are interesting logical arguments.  We can say if the premises are true or not, and we can say whether the conclusion follows from these premises.   But they're not evidence, they're either logically true or false.  In this case, the Kalam or first cause argument suffers a plethora of philosophical and scientific flaws. 

Let me conclude with my own syllogism to illustrate this point:

P1: Everything that exists has a natural cause (by induction)*

P2: Gods are supernatural 

C: Gods cannot exist or cause anything that does exist.

* E.g. We've replaced many supernatural explanations with natural, and never a natural explanation with a supernatural.