The Body-Count Proof of God

One of the dilemmas the religious face, is accounting for the horrific atrocities of their religion whilst simultaneously holding on to the belief their faith is the product of a loving, moral creator.  I can't say that I'm persuaded for instance, that a religion that spawned the crusades, inquisition, witch-trials and pogrom demonstrates any divine origin.

There is a type of theist who responds to this by arguing that atheism has killed more. This is done by cherry-picking some of the 20th C totalitarian states and the death toll these perpetuated. In effect, they are trying to justify the body count of their religion with the body count of other regimes.

• The argument is on one hand, simply offensive. The emergence of totalitarian regimes in the early and mid-twentieth century were a product of many factors. These factors were myriad- political economic, military etc.  Most importantly, such states ranged from true Christian regimes (Mussolini, Franco) to Christian-influenced theism (Hitler)

  

  German Wehrmacht belt-buckle with slogan "God with Us".

  to communist regimes in E Europe (Stalin). The mass-slaughter of people in the mid-20th C by totalitarian governments, is just an argument against totalitarianism. That’s the only fair conclusion we can draw from this slaughter. 
• The comparison also fails because the Communist regimes did not kill in the name of atheism. They killed because they identified some groups as being enemies of the state and targeted them. Atheism isn’t a political philosophy. It is not a synonym with Marxism.
• On the other hand, religions have killed in the name of their religion. Christians tortured and executed their neighbours for witchcraft because that’s exactly what their religion said to do. Torture was attendant to this to force a confession- so that the person’s soul could still be saved. It was a strange concern- Christian love- for the soul that made torture acceptable.
• The history of Islam since the days of the 4th Caliph Ali is one driven by sectarian violence. The normally moderate 12th C Damascene historian ibn al-Qalanisi describes the attacks on the Batinis in Damascus- adding with relish how their slain bodies were just left in the streets for the dogs to devour.The current stories of horrific

  

  Two Bombs Kill 66 in Baquba, Iraq

  bombings from the Middle East show little has changed.
• The third problem is the changes in technology are ignored. If the Crusaders had spandau machine-guns instead of swords and spears, the whole body-count comparison would look a lot different. It’s not even a fair comparison.

Lastly, the whole line of argument is a big ‘so what’. If your case for god is that your religion has killed a few million people less than some other doctrine, it’s still a pretty odious religion. And it offers absolutely no evidence for the existence of god. Maybe atheism does make some people evil. So what? It doesn’t make your god real. Only valid evidence can do that.

The - "I was a former atheist" - ploy

Every so often, you run into a religious person who employs this line on you. They claim "they were an atheist but then, they saw the light" (or whatever). There’s a moment of awkwardness that follows this clumsy attempt to build a rapport.

Here’s why it does not work.

• First, there are not any commonly-held doctrines to atheism. You can’t presume your former reasons not to have Jesus in your life are the same as mine. Jumping straight in and assuming I was in a similar state to you is, well, inane. At least ask me why I’m an atheist.
• Second, there’s a difference between being an atheist and non-religious.  Being an atheist is an actual position taken towards the evidence for gods. Many “former atheists” I’ve encountered were simply non-religious for a time. They were indifferent to the claims by religion- they didn’t take an atheist position. It was far too apathetic. But they’re still primed for belief- they are exposed often and regularly to religious influences.

These conversion stories are pretty basic fare for Christians. And I appreciate that from such a perspective, anyone who hasn’t adopted a formal religious stance is clumped into the big atheist set. It must sound kind of exciting, hearing these tales of conversion of atheists. But it doesn’t work like this. Real atheists don’t get converted to Christianity by listening to your faith and convictions.  Witnessing goes down like a cup of cold-sick.

If you want to convert atheist, then the only thing that will work is valid evidence that your beliefs can be substantiated. We’ve all heard the Jesus speech before. We’ve all been witnessed to, we’ve all been prayed for. You need to stump-up with actual evidence rather than assertions describing your faith.

Sigh, a house is not a universe

The return of the Faulty Analogy Fallacy

Sometimes I get this argument popping up. It’s an argument from analogy. Kind of, because we know houses were designed and built, and a house is like the universe, it must be that the universe was designed and built by a creator.

Like most arguments from analogy, it is a weak argument*. It is not an appeal to evidence. It is an appeal to all sorts of hidden assumptions and presumptions that get attached to it. It fails simply because those assumptions aren’t shared by others.

We can test the claim that houses are designed objects. This is based on the following traits:

• Observations: We actually see houses getting built by human agents. So far, nobody has observed a universe being built by an external agent.
• Objective: A house has a specific objective. It provides shelter for the occupants. It is this use- to which it is purposely built- that tells us its designed. Nobody has proved that the universe has a like-objective. The universe appears entirely indifferent to our existence. It was around about 14bn years before we turned up, and will continue long after our solar-system dies.
• Efficiency: This relatives to objective. Objects that are designed try to meet their objectives in efficient ways- needless redundancy, wastage of materials, inflated risks- all invalidate the idea of design. A vast universe that hurtles deadly space rocks at us, and bathes us in deadly UV radiation, could do with some tweaks.
• Economy: designed artifacts are constrained by the resources available for their use. The decision to use one input over another, is driven by a conscious and deliberate observable decision. We don’t observe these substitutions occurring in the universe.

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* Indeed, if you have to make an argument based on an analogy that cannot be supported by evidence, chances are it’s fatally flawed. Please stop.

I am not an evolutionist

Until I got on to the web and started interacting with creationists again, I’d never heard this term before. Lets be clear- I reject it, utterly and totally. 

I am a biologist, not an evolutionist. That means I have spent years at University getting an advanced education. That means a lot of practical work in the field and in the lab. 

It means that I know the difference between a monkey and an ape. I have travelled to, and worked on 4 different continents with a variety of wildlife. In the course of this work, I have discovered and published things. I have been exposed to various hazards along the way. I have lost colleagues to fatal diseases and accidents.  At no point in time I ever met a creationist doing fieldwork in these places.         

At no point in time, have I taken a course in evolutionism. There are no journals on evolutionism. There are no academic or government positions that have evolutionist as the title. The term only exists as a pejorative attempt by creationists to create the fiction that an entire scientific discipline is a mere dogma.

If your claims are built entirely on what you have read on creationist websites and sources, then your beliefs are dogmatic. There is no symmetry between creationism and biology. Until you get off your arses, stop trying to appropriate other people’s research, and start doing your own, not one iota of credit can be given to the creationist view.

Letters to the faithful: Some Etiquette

I’m afraid it has become necessary to compose a simple guide for Christians wanting to undertake dialogue with atheists.  This has been spurred by the social lapses I’ve encountered recently.
1. Don’t pretend you want dialogue when you want to preach instead.  Dialogue does not mean you get to preach at me without responding to my objections to your claims.  Dialogue does not mean witnessing to me. Dialogue actually requires a two way system of open communication.
2. Don’t finish a conversation by saying ‘God bless’ or the like. It doesn’t make you a good person. It really means that you have so little respect for your opponent’s values that you are still willing to dump your religious values on them. Unsolicited and undesired impositions of your values are just rude.

3. Don’t assume atheists are angry. It is easy to attribute emotional content to web-exchanges that has no real basis in fact. This becomes aggravating because then the exchange breaks down. I’ll make some objection and you dismiss that because you think I’m just being angry. If you can’t honestly deal with objections, why pretend you’re indulging in dialogue?  It seems to be a common religious fiction that atheists are inherently angry people. That’s not true. The cause is more likely to be closer to home. You’re wasting time on this nonsense I’m angry- which eventually is going to piss me off.

4. Don’t employ the superiority gambit. There is few things more aggravating than assuring me I don’t know true happiness or love because I don’t share your religious beliefs. That is deeply patronising and likely to offend. Expect your claim to be treated with contempt.

5. Don’t threaten me with hell. If I threatened to arrange your torture if you didn’t agree with me, you’d neither think highly of me nor find this a persuasive argument. It works the other way too. I’m not going to suddenly believe god exists because you have this unproven claim I’ll be tortured if I don’t. It just makes you appear to be a coward (motivated by fear) and a bully.  You know, neither of those are laudable traits.

6. Don’t play the apologist-website dodge. Let’s face it. My time is limited. If you can only respond to my objections by recommending I visit some apologist website, you’re wasting my time. Give a proper answer a go. I’ll think more highly of you. Sending me to a website that generates palpable falsehoods about evolution (hey, I can tell) or merely objections religious people imagine atheists have, don’t deal with my objections. Atheists don’t follow the same script so the scripted answers on apologist websites are pretty pointless.

7. Passages from the bible aren’t answers. You know the bit in bible class when they say the word of god has power. They lied.

8. Don’t play the martyr card. Look, you might be a nice person. But being a Xtian isn’t to an atheist, a synonym for being a nice or trustworthy person. And if you don’t want me telling you honestly what parts of your religion I find abhorrent or ludicrous, then why are you talking to me? Christians often seem very keen to play the matryr card (I’m persecuting you) to end a dialogue rather than grapple with issues like human suffering. You have to remember, atheists aren’t going to have all these patsy-questions you can research by looking up a website. They’re going to have really tricky ones. And I’m not going to bother with a charade that we’re destined to best buddies.

9. Don’t lecture me on what I must believe. Asking your pastor for what atheists believe is like asking a cat how birds fly. I’ve identified as an atheist for decades. I don’t need anyone telling me what I must or must not believe in. I’m the atheist right? I think I’ve got a good handle on that already. If I correct you on what atheism is, why would you disagree with me? If I said Xtians have to believe the earth is the centre of the solar system and that witchcraft is not only real, anyone suspected of being a witch should be killed, I imagine you might object to that definition. It’s the same thing for atheists. Don’t make up stuff about what we believe. Just accept the corrections and move on.

Letters to the faithful: Please don't tell me what I believe

It's sometimes great having theists ask me about atheism.  I appreciate that it can be tough for a believer to get their head around how an atheist sees the world.  I don't mind spending a bit of time on that.  But nothing is going to cause friction faster than a theist telling me what I must believe (sadly often in form of strawman fallacy).  There's a lot of misconceptions about what atheism is.  It really isn't hard.

All atheism means is the lack of belief in gods. If you claim there is a god, then atheism is summed up as the lack of belief in that claim.  It is really really simple.  It's about the issue of belief in gods.  Atheism is not the claim that gods don't exist.  That is a different issue relating to knowledge.  Many atheists are also agnostics.  Richard Dawkins for instance.

Atheism does not mean I believe the universe created itself out of nothing. The origins of the universe relate to the scientific discipline of cosmology.  All atheism means is I'm unconvinced by any non-evidenced story involving a talking snake. I don't need to have an alternative model in mind to reject a theistic explanation.  It is the lack of evidence that gives me reason to reject a divine cause, not the existence of alternatives.  Neither atheists (nor indeed cosmologists) can be defined as having a belief in big-bang cosmology.

Atheism is not a political ideology.  Atheism does not lead to Marxism or other forms of totalitarian governments.  Totalitarianism is the product of various socio-economic and political factors.  It manifested itself in Christian dictatorships and in Marxist ones.  Stalin did not kill in the name of atheism, but to rid the state of what he perceived were its enemies.  Atheism is a response to a claim, it is not an ideology.

Atheism doesn't mean I make up my morals. Atheism makes no claims about morality in exactly the same way it makes no claims about how to repair motorcycles.  This lies outside the scope of atheism.  Atheism is a response to a claim.  It is not an ideology or a world view or a system of ethics or a method to repair motorcycles. Clearly I don't get my morals from a guidebook from antiquity. But there is around four centuries of secular moral philosophy that provide a rational alternative.  Personally, contractarianism appeals to me the most.  None of these moral philosophies actually say you get to make the rules as you go.

Atheism does not mean I believe we evolved from rocks. Atheism makes no claims about the origin of life, nor its diversity.  These are questions that biologists address.  The nice thing is that many of their answers are actually backed by evidence.  Atheism is not the same as evolutionary biology.  It's scope is limited to rejecting the theist claim of divine causes. 

In short, any time, anyone tries to assert that atheism is more than a response to a claim, then they are misrepresenting atheism.  Often the motive for doing so is malicious.  Sadly many attempt to stigmatise atheism I believe, to hinder believers understanding the perspective.

Not again! Pascals' Wager

A number of things can be guaranteed in life. One is that a Christian will employ ‘Pascal’s Wager’ on you if you’re an atheist. 

Pascal's Wager derives from the 17th C French philosopher Blaise Pascal. He proposed an argument for god based on a gamble.  If you believe in god and it tuns out you're wrong, you've lost very little.  If you don't believe in god and it turns out you're wrong, then wow. You are really going to suffer.  The argument covers the general form of argument where you base belief on consequences. 

This wager acknowledges the lack of evidence for a god, but so turns faith into a gamble instead. If Christianity (whilst premised on Christianity, the argument can be employed more generally and often is, I've had Muslims use it on me too) is right, they avoid an eternity of torture.  On that basis, belief is rational whilst non-belief in god is irrational.

 It doesn’t work for three main reasons

• There are thousands of gods known in human cultures. The odds Christianity is right as a ‘gamble’ are thousands to one against. On that basis, the odds I’m going to end up in the Maori underworld are pretty much identical to you. So it fails as a ‘good bet’.

• It’s insufficient to generate belief. This is actually the big one. The wager doesn’t generate any evidence (this formed one of the earliest critiques of Pascal’s wager). It doesn’t matter if hell is true or not. If you don’t have an evidence, then a rational person can’t choose to believe.
  Consider this analogy: Using Alien technology I have mounted giant lasers on the moon. They’re undetectable. I have targeted your family for destruction at a random time in the future. Unless you send me money now, these lasers will destroy everything you hold dear later.
  This is identical to Pascal’s Wager. I provide no evidence, I just promise a horrible fate in the future if you don’t believe me. By the logic of the wager, you should believe me because you can’t afford not to.
  One suspects you don’t believe me for one simple reason. There’s still no evidence to back up the threat. The lack of evidence in Pascal’s wager is why it has no validity.

• It’s a coward’s argument. I find it repellent because it is based on fear of consequences, not reason or evidence.

There are other objections.  One is that it's based on a pretence.  You're effectively going to Church as a kind of 'fire-insurance'.  The theory is that you can fool god into accepting you're a believer.  Pascal tried to deal with that objection by arguing that you would gradually become a true believer with this immersive process.