Super-Duper Secret Atheist Research
by MikeGeneAccording to leaders in the Anti-Religion Movement, science has shown us that God does not exist. Or, as Dawkins might say, science has shown that it is really, really, really, really unlikely that God exists. Yet in 1998, the National Academy of Sciences stated, "Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral." [1] Thus, sometime between 1998 and 2007, there must have been a scientific breakthrough, or calculation, that established the need to abandon this neutrality and declare the non-existence of God.
To uncover these extraordinary results and/or calculations, I did a PubMed search. [2]
I first used the following search string: "Dawkins, R God" I got one hit:
New York Rev Books. 2007 Jan 11;54(1):21-4.
A mission to convert.
Orr HA.
Disappointing. That's the article where a leading evolutionary biologist reviews Richard Dawkins' anti-religious book and gives it a blistering smack down. Thus, the Professor for the Public Understanding of Science has NOT published a single scientific paper that establishes the non-existence of God.
So what about neuroscientist Sam Harris? In this case, I retrieved four hits, but none authored by Sam Harris and none addressing the existence of God. Harris is clearly following in the footsteps of Dawkins.
What about developmental biologist, PZ Myers? The results are as follows: "No items found." Thus, we have another scientist who has failed to publish a scientific paper supporting the central claim of the Anti-Religion Movement.
So how many peer-reviewed, scientific papers exist that demonstrate God does not exist?
Zero.
How many peer-reviewed, scientific papers exist that show it is highly, highly, unlikely that God exists?
Zero.
There are two possible explanations for this anomaly. First, in their zeal to make a world without religion, these scientists forgot to do something called "˜research.' That is, these scientists decided to circumvent the peer-review process and hijack Science to serve their own socio-political agenda. Of course, since members of the Anti-Religion Movement commonly accused the ID Movement of doing just this, it is hard to believe they would engage in such blatant hypocrisy. Thus, let us turn to the second possible explanation.
It is possible that secret research is being conducted by these anti-religious scientists and is being funded by the lead think tank in this new movement. Currently, and for reasons unknown, they are not willing to share the calculations and groundbreaking experimental results.
In conclusion, the leaders of the Anti-Religion Movement need to a) share the results of their secret research or b) get back to the lab and come up with some research. As it stands now, the Anti-Religion Movement finds itself joined at the hip with the ID Movement "“ both movements make grand, sensational claims in the popular media, but neither one has the peer-reviewed experimental results that validate those claims.
Citations
1. National Academy of Sciences Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (Natl Acad. Press, Washington DC, 1998).
2. PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm
The EAs who read and post at TT can acknowledge that claims about science refuting God's existence were the unwise utterances of overzealous atheists. By doing so they can enhance their claims that atheists rely on rational thinking as a means of determining their viewpoints.
Comment by Bradford — May 2, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 am
Nice post Mike.
We should also acknowledge that there is a big difference between atheists and anti-theists. As far as I can experience, the later are very vocal but in minority.
Comment by inunison — May 3, 2007 @ 2:44 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 am
Why are we not just assuming the hypocrisy option ?
Atheists like Dawkins insist that you can have a non-theistic moral framework in which you use reason and rationality to work out what is right and wrong without reference to a "big man in the sky" or a "dusty old book".
Clearly it is at least reasonable to suspect that in this non-theistic moral framework that they have worked out, double standards are morally acceptable if you are the one that is employing them, but are not acceptable for those whom you don't happen to like.
They can build their own moral framework as they see fit, so it wouldn't be wrong according to their constructed framework to behave in this fashion and would in fact be completely ethical and the correct course of action.
That is probably what they are doing. Which is why they think it is ok to call others on engaging in this behavior but not think it is reasonable to be called on it themselves.
It only looks like blatant self-serving hypocrisy and speaking with a forked tongue because we don't understand the nuances of their superior non-theistic moral framework in which things that look like blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty are actually perfectly reasonable moral actions and not hypocritical or dishonest at all.
All of this is just a misunderstanding by Mike because he lacks the appropriate "enlightened" moral framework that these leaders in the anti-religion movement are employing.
How could you be so ignorant Mike ?
Comment by thesciphishow — May 3, 2007 @ 3:08 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:54 am
Hi inunison,
You write:
Agreed! The text of my post focuses on the Anti-religion movement (ARM), but the title does necessitate the caveat that you raise.
Comment by MikeGene — May 3, 2007 @ 6:54 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:13 am
As a side note, what would harris call the constitution? if we suddenly woke up one day without our memory but still had all our "stuff", but not dusty old constitution, what would happen? would it be rewritten at some point in the future by "discovery" the whole idea is rather funny really because harris seems to have ignored one important thing: all that "stuff" that would still be here for us to figure out, was created by us for our specific historical goals. its like saying if we had a gun in the room and suddenly we forgot about all how mad we were at each other, would i look at the gun and think "oh whats this, lets find out….bang….oh wow, guns are the truth because they teach us about death, how scientific for us to have discovered this, by the way sorry youre dead."
Comment by dantedanti — May 3, 2007 @ 10:13 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
Are you aware that this show of googling for scientific papers on the existence of God is silly? Here, I'll recap for you. Religion makes a big sack of empirical claims about the physical world. Science disproves many of these claims. Religion begins to use the bait-and-switch: when the nasty atheists aren't looking, God is a big bearded man in the sky who makes your favorite football team win; when they are, he conveniently shrinks into a nondisprovable corner.
Dawkins comes along, and states that while science can't disprove nonfalsifiable claims ("God is Love", and such), it doesn't really need to, because (a) religion has been wrong about pretty much every other attempt to describe the world, so why should we trust it about anything else?, and (b) science has disproved that the earth is six thousand years old, that there's a big dome of water above the sky, that plagues are caused by Satan, that virgin birth of a male is possible and so on. If you asked a pre-19th century Christian if denying those things was denying the existence of their God, you'd get a resounding yes. The goalposts have been moved comfortably outside the realm of falsifiability, but science has disproved the pre-19th century/Answers In Genesis God; the religious have just gotten a new, smaller, nimbler one and are pretending that nothing has happened.
(Incidentally, I'll wager that in the research published on those topics, it wasn't presented as "thus, the six-thousand year old Earth is disproven", or "thus, plagues aren't caused by Satan". Others have made the point that we don't see peer-reviewed research on the existence of garage dragons, either.)
Also, thesciphishow:
Atheists like Dawkins not only insist that you can have etc. etc., but that you (and I mean second-person you in addition to third-person you) do have a non-theistic moral framework. The argument he uses (I'm abbreviating terribly here) is that people don't follow the Bible literally, choosing to see some parts as metaphorical or no longer applicable; they're thus making moral decisions not based on the Bible.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 10:15 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:49 am
grendelkhan,
Your view on science and religion (read Christianity) is very much late 19th century, so please stay with the program.
Comment by inunison — May 3, 2007 @ 11:49 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:05 pm
inunison: Meaning what? I pointed out that science did disprove the god of the 19th century, which was then replaced (in public) with a nondisprovable "God is Love" schtick, but people do still worship the former, just not when anyone's looking with a skeptical eye.
By claiming that my criticisms aren't relevant to the current situation, are you claiming that people don't pray for the victory of their favorite football team, or that no one seriously entertains the thought of a six thousand year old Earth? How exactly are my criticisms "nineteenth-century"
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm
grendel, you're the one pulling a bait-and-switch:
"Religion" is far too generalized to be useful (unless you'd like to posit some unseen religious body that oversees all of the world religions in order to control humanity, in which case I'll have a nice chuckle), and I'm fairly sure no one is really doing what you say on the individual level (switching back between a public and private conception). Your complaint, as far as I can tell, is that some religious people believe in a largely irrational view of God, and others have a conception that is far more in line with what we know about the universe. To which I respond: So?
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 3, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
It amazes me how incredibly simplistic and shallow the God is that atheists choose to disbelieve in.
More ammunition for Steve Petermann's "weak sister" hypothesis — that atheists almost always choose to argue with the weakest possible versions of non-atheist beliefs.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
So what?
So what?
I wouldn't call them "nineteenth century". I would only state that they take on the weakest flavors of non-atheism. The "weak sister" hypothesis playing itself out yet again. . .
I use the term "non-atheism" very deliberately here. Because ultimate reality is beyond our ability to encompass with concepts. Thinking words like "theism" or "God" can do justice to the foundation of reality the same kind of deluded thinking as a 12 year old virgin in sex ed. class thinking he understands the topic in a real way.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
thechristiancynic: When I wrote "religion", I was thinking of religions which posit a big bearded man in the sky, which, given that we're writing in English, means Christianity. It's not that I think other religions are less silly, but rather that I live in a predominantly Christian nation, and I'm writing on a message board that frequently leans toward Christianity. And given that the universal impulse toward belief in people manifests in such a variety of ways, I'd be a fool, as you pointed out, to try and apply such a brush to all belief systems. So, with the caveat that I'm not letting other religions off the hook, I'm specifically speaking about Christianity, as practiced in the United States (and to a certain extent in Britain). Does that clear it up?
That may be (I thought Andrew Sullivan had done it in his dialogue with Sam Harris, but my eyes glazed over after the first half), but it certainly happens on a larger scale–consider the criticisms of The God Delusion which essentially stated that no one really believes in all that embarrassing stuff about genocide and the Old Testament, and that modern belief in god is way more subtle than that. (That this wouldn't make a difference to his arguments in TGD is beside the point.)
No, my complaint is that some religious people believe in a largely wrong–as in empirically disprovable–view of god, then dishonestly claim that said empiricism doesn't actually disprove their view of god. Next, MikeGene comes along and searches the scholarly literature for empirical research disproving the airy-fairy-practically-Deist god, then considers his point made when he doesn't find anything. Did you read my first comment, where I said the same thing using slightly different words? How am I not being clear about this?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
You have a extraordinarily odd conception of what most Christians believe. I am not a Christian BTW.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Ah, so you're admitting your ethnocentrism!
But yes, that does clear matters up a bit, although I still think your language painted inappropriately broad strokes for the point.
Is this just about public perception, then? That certain Christians espouse a largely anthropomorphic deity (and so forth) but then Christianity is defended as having more sophisticated postulations? I'm still at a loss on this.
Okay, my turn for an admission: I hadn't read your first comment before my last comment. Sorry about that.
However, I would question your claim: when people like Dawkins say that science has disproved the existence of God, they are not talking about a proscribed view like the YEC position but rather the broad view of a creative deity who caused the universe to exist. At very least, the "triumph" seems to be framed that way.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 3, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I don't think one can be an atheist if one doesn't disbelieve in all gods. I'd bet that you disbelieve in some pretty simplistic and shallow gods yourself.
mcromer: I've already explained why I think this is important. Again: science has disproved a god which many people believe in to this day. Just because it's no longer as polite to mention obviously false beliefs in public doesn't mean that they don't exist, or that they don't matter
Is that supposed to dissuade people from pointing out that MikeGene is wrong or that believers in a six thousand year old Earth are wrong?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I don't believe in any concept of God. Nonetheless I account myself as closer to the "theist" camp than the atheist. God is a word that points at the ultimate nature of reality. Typically atheism is used to describe, not just those who disbelieve in God, but also are physicalist reductionists who think that consciousness is epiphenomenal to reality.
Where have you demonstrated that Mike Gene is wrong? I agree that the six thousand year old earth is wrong, but that doesn't mean your atheism (which I strongly suspect is the usual reductionist physicalist type) is right. You seem to think it does.
Frankly the failure of physicalist atheists to seriously address evidence against their position (experimental psi research, the near-death experience, anomalous information transfers) in favor of going after the "weak sisters" of fundamentalist religion for ego gratification makes it clear to me that they are arguing from a shaky foundation.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm
mcromer: How do you know what most Christians believe? The best data I found with a quick search was this 1991 survey; supposing that it makes no sense to believe in Biblical inerrancy if you don't believe in god (that would be contradictory, wouldn't it?), about half of believers believe in an inerrant Bible. It's hardly a fringey idea.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
thechristiancynic:
You're right; I wanted to head off complaints that I wasn't picking on someone else's religion equally, but I ended up just making a muddle of it all.
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it.
And you're right; science hasn't disproven the Deist god, because it's immune to disproof. However, the retreat of the YEC god into a Deist shell can be pretty clearly charted. The Dawkins argument, in part, says that religion was wrong when it was disprovable, so why should that change just because it's positioned itself to be immune from criticism? Not to mention that a Deist god isn't really very fun to believe in; a Deist god doesn't bless your nation, or proscribe sexual practices you find icky, or command you to be kind to others and perform charity, or any of that stuff. At the extreme, it's hardly recognizable as the same sort of entity as the YEC god.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:58 pm
grendelkhan,
This is too funny. Is that how you got knowledge about Christian Theology?
Comment by inunison — May 3, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
mcromer:
Einstein would have agreed with that, I think, but would have disagreed at what's meant by it. I'm not sure where this sits between squishy Deism and an unfortunate renaming of the laws of physics, but it may be what I mean by a retreat into nondisprovability.
Whoa, sailor. You'll note that I didn't actually state my own beliefs; rather, I quoted and described the beliefs of others. While you may infer some things about by beliefs based on my comments (I'm clearly not a YEC), you're going to be overreaching if you guess at specifics… which don't even have much bearing on my original point.
Are you saying something other than "how dare he point out how ridiculous religion is if you take it seriously!"
Let's clarify a bit: I'm not claiming that Dawkins or any other atheist has proven atheism, or has disproven theism. I'm also not claiming that this makes atheists better people than theists, or that I'm better than anyone else in particular.
My claims are that when Dawkins and his ilk talk about science putting the kibosh on religion, they're referring to the 19th-century parade of results showing that a variety of empirical claims made by Christianity were demonstrably false (water above the sky, six thousand years, etc.); Christianity from then on couldn't repeat these claims in polite company, but belief in them continues, and like it or not, they're an integral part of Christianity for many. (See the previously-linked survey on biblical literalism.) In defense, Christianity is now sold as a much weaker set of claims, which have the advantage of not being disprovable. But given that Christianity was wrong about all those other claims, it's argued that it has a pretty shaky claim to be right about much of anything.
MikeGene claims that science hasn't disproved Christianity, and he's right about that–it's only disproved the parts that are possible to disprove–mostly a century ago–and declared the rest of it unworthy of serious consideration, given Christianity's track record on being right about the non-obvious. The dots aren't connected in the research–which is why it's ridiculous for him to wave his hands at that PubMed search like he's proven anything–but a synthesis of the given facts (Christianity was wrong before, and the reasons for its nondisprovable claims don't differ from those for its disprovable claims) is perfectly reasonable..
Also, what's an "anomalous information transfer" Google wasn't helpful; mea culpa on having you do my homework for me.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:15 pm
inunison:
No, that's how I got knowledge about what type of religion most Americans subscribe to. Why would a survey of belief patterns serve as an introduction to the esoterica of Christianity, and why would you think I thought it did?
Do you have some data somewhere which shows that biblical literalism isn't popular among Americans? Or that the bearded man in the sky who cares about your sex life is a relatively unpopular interpretation of Christianity? If you do, please share.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
This is a false claim. There are numerous biblical claims that could have been falsified by archeological discoveries. The trend has been in the opposite direction.
Comment by Bradford — May 3, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Bradford, you're absolutely right. It looks like I'm saying that the Bible is entirely false, and that's not the case. I'll revise that: where the Bible makes statements about the nature of the world that couldn't be verified by a relatively curious person with no modern tools (e.g., "the sky is a dome with water above it", not "grass is green"), it's wrong.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
I think science has disproved the first two claims on your list. They are, of course, not religious claims, per se, but reflect an obsolete cosmology. Prior to the revolutionary theory of general relativity and Hubble's discoveries about galaxies, and Big Bang cosmological science, most scientists believed in cosmologies which are also now obsolete. If it doesn't follow that this obsolescence 'disproves science'—and it doesn't, then it also doesn't follow that the obsolescence of young Earth or Aristotelian cosmologies 'disproves religion' or 'disproves theism'. To think otherwise would be dreadfully sloppy reasoning, unworthy of a 'bright'.
I don't think science has disproved the second two claims on your list. Discovering what genetic processes result in human brains does not disprove that God intentionally causes human brains (by causing those genetic processes). Discovering what physical processes cause plagues doesn't disprove that Satan is the cause of those processes.
However I'm more interested in the virginal conception case, which I will try to elucidate, after some general prefatory remarks.
It is often amusing to see people complaining that immaterial willing is a 'violation of the laws of physics', for at least two reasons: 1) these 'laws' are not themselves physical objects, and yet they are held to determine what happens to physical objects; and so the complaint is self-contradictory for it posits nonphysical causation while supposing that there can't be such a thing; and 2) if the 'laws' are not real entities causally determining how physical objects behave but simply our shorthand descriptions of how physical objects normally behave, then one could only know that physical events are absolutely uniform in having no nonphysical causes if one knew that no events like immaterial causation had ever occurred nor ever would"”in other words, if one knew for sure physical events or regularities were, um, absolutely uniform in having no nonphysical causes. Perhaps nonphysical causes are regularly occurring; after all people will their own actions all the time. So to try to use the observed regularity of nature to show nonphysical causes cannot occur is to argue in a small circle. (I explain a little more about this here and here.
Moreover, the notion of 'a violation of a law of nature' is incoherent, because if something happens that is supposed to be a violation, such as a virginal conception, then by definition it's not a law of nature that that event can't happen. And if it's not a law that that event cannot happen, the occurrence of the event cannot be a violation of anything more than human expectations.
If any event E actually occurs, then it logically must be consistent with a true generalized description of what occurs. (Such generalizations can always include terms like 'for the most part', or 'almost always'). Suppose E is Jesus changing water into wine, and suppose E actually occurred. Then it's not true that it's a strict law of nature that water cannot be changed into wine. And so no law was broken or violated by it happening, even though 'water can almost never be changed into wine' would still be a true generalization. Pari passu if E is Jesus being conceived in a virgin's womb.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Belief in an "inerrant bible" doesn't require belief in a 6000 year old earth and certainly doesn't entail belief in a large bearded man in the sky. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Do many Christians believe that one could prove the virgin birth scientifically? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? If it could be shown that natural causes could account for the Virgin Birth I think Christianity would be put in a much worse spot than if science couldn't show how natural causes could account for it. Because then there would be no need to say, "praise be to God! A virgin birth!", but instead, "no biggie, good ol' natural causes at work". How would one differentiate the two?
I don't know if it's a matter of whether science can prove any of this stuff. I think Christian belief would be put in an awkward position if this could all be account for scientifically.
A miracle that can be easily accounted for by pointing towards natural causes is quite the paltry miracle.
Comment by Doug — May 3, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
No, I suspect it is. What's the relevance? I'm not a Christian, and neither are several of the blog writers here who nonetheless support a telic interpretation of evolution.
I've never met *any* Christians who believe that God is a bearded man in the sky. And I've known many Christians.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
In case anyone doesn't realize it, there is a long (200+ comment) discussion of this topic on an older thread which is proceeding in parallel.
Comment by keiths — May 3, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
stunney:
Oh, come on. These were cosmological claims made by the Bible and accepted as articles of faith for centuries on end. To pretend that they weren't integral to the Christian faith is ridiculous; just ask the AiG folks.
It's not so much about what you believe as why; the reasons for believing the early Christian cosmology (inherited from the Hebrews) were the usual religious reasons–revelation, tradition and authority. The reasons for believing previous scientific cosmologies involved reason and evidence. Obsolete cosmologies were discarded (with much scuffling and inertia, as scientists are human too) based on more reason and evidence, and most importantly, they were discarded by scientists. Religion doesn't work like that.
You know, I'm almost sorry I didn't write a paragraph or two about my own beliefs, given how prone the folks here are to label me whether or not I decide to label myself.
That's exactly the sort of moving beyond the realm of testability that I've been talking about. It's completely explainable in physical terms, but you get to keep your supernatural goodies hanging around in the gaps… but why keep Satan around at all, in that case? I should add that it's a pretty wimpy Satan that can be foiled by installing a sanitation system.
I was wrong to include the bit about the virgin birth in there, as it's supposed to be a miracle, and thus isn't really the point of what I'm talking about. Replace it with flowers having been around longer than insects, or something like that.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
mcromer:
On the first count, check with the AiG folks on that one. And on the second, why are you bringing me anecdotes? I brought you data; please do the same for me.
Bully for you. This thread isn't about evolution; it's about MikeGene taking a cheap shot at science and intentionally missing the point.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
:tip-toes in:
You're conflating Biblical inerrancy with Biblical literalism. They are not the same thing (e.g., iirc, 90% of americans are theists and 80% believe the earth is billions of years old)
Inerrancy in context
literalism
From link: "In a sense, however, biblical literalism is not synonymous with biblical inerrancy"
FYI: literalists are the minority (about 20% usually) in every single poll I've ever seen. Can anybody set me straight here?
No. These theories/observations came first. Then they were adapted to fit Scripture. Then the dogma, set in. As you're making the claim you'd have to establish how these ideas started as interpretations of Scripture. You wont be able too, cause it's false, but I'd be interested in a source that claims/establishes otherwise.
I normally stay out of the way wrt serious topics around here. You guys (critics too) are out of my league. But this is day one stuff, and I'm suprised to see critics state obvious falsehoods (as above and including 'bearded men in the sky' etc,) so matter-of-factly.
Just me?
Tip-toes on outa dodge.
Comment by Rob R. — May 3, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Convergent blogging, interesting. Common design?
Ok, ok
Bye
Comment by Rob R. — May 3, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
So you're saying 'don't take their word for it…. take these OTHER individual's word for it'. Great argument.
Where do we get the notion that the universe follows immutable laws? Does science show us that? Can reason elucidate it? If so, please explain.
Like an infinite universe being replaced by one that had a beginning, almost looking as if it was created from nothing. And you're squabbling over flowers and bugs.
Comment by Doug — May 3, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
No, thank you.
Can you read what I said? I said that the disproof of these cosmologies wouldn't disprove religion or theism. The Bible could be full of absurd cosmologies and Christianity or Hinduism might still be true. And to equate the Bible with religion, or with theism as a general metaphysical theory. is muddle-headed ludicrousness, unworthy of a 'bright'.
You're not listening. Many specific religious and general theistic metaphysical beliefs do not depend for their truth-status on whether a particular cosmology is obsolete. 'The earth is billions of years old and Jesus Christ rose from the dead' is not a self-contradictory proposition, and hence is possibly true, even if at one time many believers in Christ's resurrection also believed that the earth was flat, a few thousand years old, and is the center of the universe.
And have you heard of Georges Lemaitre?
I didn't say you were a 'bright'; I said such sloppy reasoning would be unworthy of a 'bright'.
Two points: I'm addressing the question of what doesn't follow logically from the existence of valid physical explanations for plagues, not asserting that Satan causes them. You care about being logical, don't you?
For example, I might say that my mind decided to type this comment. A scientist observing me might publish a paper declaring that he had explained my typing in purely physical terms, and that reference to my mind was superfluous. It would not follow that my mind doesn't exist. Then there's the issue of the scientist's own mind—does he have one, since all his actions are also explainable in physical terms? But it would be rather odd, don't you think, if science, using reason and evidence, were to declare: there are no rational minds among the scientific community. This, to my mind (sorry), is self-reduction to absurdity on a grand scale, which is usually an indication that Something Is Wrong With This Picture.
Have you read God And Other Minds, by Plantinga? Perhaps you should.
Second point: testability is a poor criterion for reality. I think there is, in reality, a moral obligation not to commit genocide or burn babies for fun. I also think that obligation is not a physical reality. Then there's numbers and other mathematical entities–they have no rest mass, emit no radiation, are completely invisible, and yet are fundamental to science. The same goes for meanings, laws, necessities, and other nonphysical entities.
Et cetera.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Where is your data about the number of Christians who believe in a 6000 year old earth? And where is your data about the number of Christians who believe God is a large bearded man in the sky?
You seem to drastically misunderstand the entire nature of religion, if you think that religion is a set of empirical claims about the material universe.
I say this as someone who does not subscribe to any religion.
Comment by mcromer — May 3, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:34 pm
There's this slightly irritating debating tactic which I've seen way too much among (some) detractors of theism to charge theists with defending ridiculous belief x; then, when the theist points out she does not in fact hold belief x but the philosophically rather more mature belief y, to charge theists or even per grendelkhan "religion" (since when is religion an agent capable of holding beliefs?) with switching between public sophisticated belief y and private ridiculous belief x or stating that sophisticated belief y isn't really relevant anyway as religious people "really" all hold to ridiculous belief x. The debating tactic is irritating because it avoids actually dealing with what the opponent really holds.
Grendelkhan: It's quite correct that a Deist deity isn't disprovable by empirical means. But that does not mean a Deist hypothesis cannot be argued to be philosophically incoherent or inconsistent in some fashion. Aside from this, there isn't a zero-sum game between Deism and a YEC God. There's classical theism (from Aquinas to Plantinga) and I daresay the God it posits is beyond scientific proof or disproof. The same goes for process theism. There's a whole realm of quite subtle conceptions of God outside of those held by the authors of the Answers in Genesis website.
And to regard these as irrelevant to religion as actually practiced would be quite a stretch. Aquinas exerted an enormous influence on Catholic doctrine. Likewise concepts of God in modern German theology influenced lutheranism, etcetera. A trickle-down effect, if you will.
There's nothing inherently wrong with concentrating all fire on the most ridiculous and primitive conceptions of God one can find. In as far as these are actually influential, they need to be criticized. But this is not what the "new atheists" are ostensibly doing. Dawkins' book was called the "God delusion", not the "fundamentalism delusion" or even "the religion delusion".
Comment by MerlijnDeSmit — May 3, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:18 pm
After years of posting on and off at ARN and elsewhere (though I haven't posted much anywhere in the last few years), this is by far the most inane discussion I've come across since Al Gore invented the internet.
Thanks to all for reminding me why it's best to refrain from participating in blogforums at all.
If anyone ever makes it to the Big Easy, look me up… d.b.a.'s here has a great selection of Scotch.
Comment by takuan — May 3, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
P.S. Can't figure out how to contact the management of this Joynte. So… could whoever it is who runs the place please ban me, block me, or do whatever it takes to prevent me from being able to post anything ever again? I'd be grateful if you'd erect a super-duper barrier that will keep me out forever.
Thank you.
Comment by takuan — May 3, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
May 4th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Oh I know how he tries to argue it, but all he demonstrates making claims like this ( and you likewise echoing them) is show his complete ignorance of the different strains of moral thought that have gone on in different religious traditions, but especially the judeo-christian one, about natural law and ethics and how this charge is essentially a strawman.
I don't really expect reasoning above this level from Dawkins because the guy appears to have some specific sort of mental retardation that kicks in when he talks about religion and reduces him to an ill informed angry 15 year old, but what is your excuse when you parrot his silliness ?
Comment by thesciphishow — May 4, 2007 @ 1:19 am
May 4th, 2007 at 2:31 am
SciPhi,
If you want evidence that the average Christian doesn't get her morality from the Bible, just point out the various slavery-related passages to her. If she's like most Christians, she won't have been aware of them, and she'll be a bit shocked. She won't be aware of the convoluted arguments that have been developed to justify ignoring parts of the Old Testament law while honoring others. And rather than taking seriously the idea that slavery might be a good thing, since the Bible doesn't condemn it, she'll immediately start looking for a way to reinterpret the Bible so that it doesn't clash with her strong sense that slavery is immoral. I've seen it over and over.
By the way, how's your alternative sex-ratio theory coming along?
Also by the way, I have another suggestion for your show. Assuming that you know reasonably far in advance who your guests will be, how about asking your listeners for suggested interview questions, and using the most interesting ones for the show?
Comment by keiths — May 4, 2007 @ 2:31 am
May 4th, 2007 at 2:45 am
grendelkhan said,
You haven't gotten around to disproving the God of the 13th century. Maybe you should work on that first, e.g., Summa Theologica 1.2 – 1.26 and 3.1-3.26. But you won't do that, because it would tend to refute your silly thesis that Christians adopt something else as God when atheists are not looking…
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 4, 2007 @ 2:45 am
May 4th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Of course they don't get their basic moral foundations from the biblical text. The biblical text presumes you already have a basic moral understanding before you come to it. The 10 commandments make the fact obvious.
The arguments aren't convoluted at all. They are quite straight forward really about how the different OT laws work out. It might take a little bit of work to understand the original laws in context and working out appropriate applications of them today, but that is not saying they are convoluted.
Slavery in the OT context and practiced in the OT way isn't immoral. Quite the opposite really. However the person in question is simply confusing chattel slavery in the US South with OT Israelite slavery. They are certianly not the same thing.
Haven't started, been busy.
You can always suggest interviewees and if you suggest the person and I get them i'll send you question requests.
I often don't know very far in advance or the interview ends up sitting around for a while before getting released.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 4, 2007 @ 2:53 am
May 4th, 2007 at 2:58 am
NO christian should directly get their morality in this fashion. It moral reasoning doesn't work like that. Nobody can ever "get their morality from the bible" in the way you suggest because you can't "get morality" at all.
You cannot teach someone right from wrong, they either understand it or they don't. Any way you would try to explain it to someone would assume they already understand the concept on some level.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 4, 2007 @ 2:58 am
May 4th, 2007 at 3:01 am
mcromer said,
Their reasoning works like this:
1. Christians believe that God exists.
2. God is the flying spaghetti monster (or old man in the sky, pink unicorn, &c.)
Therefore,
Christians believe that the flying spaghetti monster exists and thus Christians are delusional.
Since the atheist feels free to substitute whatever he likes for the word "God", the atheist will no doubt grant others that liberty…
1. Atheists do not believe God exists.
2. God is my refrigerator.
Therefore,
atheists do not believe my refrigerator exists, and thus atheists are delusional.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — May 4, 2007 @ 3:01 am
May 4th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Hi Grendelkhan,
You write:
Are you aware that PubMed is not Google? PubMed is a database of 17 million scientific articles. That database shows no evidence of science addressing the existence of God. Now sure, one can step outside of science and engage in a form of atheistic apologetics, cherry-picking from science the things that happen to support the philosophy of atheism. Yet this activity is not science.
Once again, Dawkins becomes the perfect archetype for the New Atheists. He expends tremendous energy and time trying to rhetorically fuse Atheism and Science. But the old guy has never published a single scientific research article that addresses his "God hypothesis." Nada. Zero. Zilch. Not one. And if that wasn't bad enough, he abandons science to peddle his pseudoscientific notion that religious parents are child abusers.
Comment by MikeGene — May 4, 2007 @ 8:36 am
May 4th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Good morning, all.
thesciphishow:
I'm trying to see how you're saying something other than "it's too complicated, you wouldn't understand it"; Dawkins is specifically responding to a claim commonly made that it's impossible to have morality without religion; I've seen this claim made stronger by claiming that it's impossible to have morality without the Bible specifically. Are you saying that no one's made this claim? Or that this claim (no morality without the Bible) is wrong?
Could you give me a brief overview of some reasoning that shows either (a) no one really claims that you need the Bible to be moral (given the common claim that atheists just want to be able to sin, sin, sin, so they reject Christianity), or (b) you can be moral without the Bible (or without religion at all)? I'm seeing a lot of hand-waving toward imaginary subtleties (kind of like what got this thread started in the first place), but not a lot of explanation of why they matter.
I see name-calling ("mental retardation", "angry 15 year old"), but I'm not seeing anything in support of your points. Am I supposed to have some sort of mystical experience and agree with you at this point?
Looking at your following post, I think I see that you're taking claim (a), that no one is really saying that atheists can't be moral without religion of some sort, usually Biblical Christianity. Is this correct? I can point out a instances of common perception of atheists as inherently immoral because they're not instructed by Biblical law, if it is.
That's an astonishing claim. Do you have an itemized list of when slavery was, historically speaking, a moral thing? Is it only when history was written by the slavers, and the descendants aren't around to make you feel guilty?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 4, 2007 @ 11:17 am
May 4th, 2007 at 11:18 am
MikeGene: Yes, I understand that PubMed isn't Google; I wasn't saying that this little quest of yours is silly because you're using the wrong search engine. I'm doing my part to corrupt the language by using "google" as a verb meaning "electronically search"; I apologize for the confusion, and will be more precise in future.
Are you saying that science provides things that are something other than supportive or neutral with respect to atheism? Could you provide an example or two?
So, your disagreement with Dawkins' crusade against religious indoctrination of children has what, exactly, to do with the position that science has disproven the existence of any god that's not indistinguishable from a nonexistent one?
Again: a number of empirical truth claims–that is, those within the reach of science–have been falsified. Do some PubMed searching for age of the earth, or whether or not there's a dome over our heads holding back the waters in the sky, or whether flowering plants existed before insects; on second thought, don't, because the relevant research is pretty damned old and I don't think PubMed goes back that far. Where the Bible can be disproven (as I specified above, when making claims about things that can be tested now, but couldn't back then), it has. There's also that study on the effectiveness of prayer, pointing out that if there is a god, it's not the sort that intervenes in a way distinguishable from not intervening at all.
If none of these things are religious in nature, and kicking them out from under the religious didn't undermine the structure of their beliefs, why the religious uproar over (for instance) the theory of evolution, which, according to you, doesn't have any bearing on anything religious? That undermining the literal truth of the Bible doesn't undermine Christianity?
What remains, when you take this away from religion? Untestable claims about nonmaterial realities which are outside the realm of science. Science has disproven the idea that the earth is a flat plate on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle, but I doubt you'll be able to find a statement to that effect in the peer-reviewed research.
Comment by grendelkhan — May 4, 2007 @ 11:18 am
May 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Your questions depend on how you define "religion" and "morality." The foundational question to this issure is: "is morality a subjective creation of an accidental process, or is it an objective law which is then discovered? "
As to, having "morality without the Bible" … you can definitely discover morality apart from belonging to a religion (since it is a natural part of us), however you wouldn't have knowledge of the spiritual origin and definition of morality from that religion's perspective.
Tell me, what is the non-religious definition of morality and deciding what is moral and why should a person be moral? When you provide me with the answer, you will discover that it involves the origin of morality. And, as the definition of morality depends on its origin, you will discover that religious morality is actually a "different animal" altogether than the non-religious view of morality; thus not even the same thing.
Furthermore, thesciphishow has already responded adequately and you refuse to acknowledge:
Secondly, you are being extremely vague when you use the phrase "get their morality." What do you mean by this phrase?
The word "slavery" used in the OT was reserved for …
1. people who sold their skills 24/7 in return for food and shelter (which is why the apostle Paul tells Christians to treat their "slaves" with respect).
2. prisoners of war … prisoners who couldn't be immediately trusted with freedom within the enemy camp.
Regarding God or nature? The people who wrote the Bible, did so from an ancient culture, with primitive sciences. Furthermore, no theologian that I am aware of has said that the Bible is a science textbook and I would argue explicitely with any who said otherwise. The Bible BEGINS to explain historical accounts of spiritual subjects. Every topic within the Bible is written from a vantage point of a specific person within a specific culture. We can learn from their religious views, filter what they say through what Jesus taught, and continue in our understanding of WHO God IS.
And when did the Bible become a science textbook? I thought you were trying to validate the claim that science has disproved God? Or, are you saying that science has disproved certain things that the Bible says God did? If that is the case, you are completely wrong, since the Bible says that "God created." When has science ever proved that God did not create our reality?
IOW, science may have disproved false assumption about the operation of nature that Biblical writers may have had, but science has not ever disproved God's existence or that God created … [everything].
Now, if you would like to continue this discussion, I am going to need a definition of the being known as God that you seem to imply that science has disproven.
Comment by CJYman — May 4, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
May 4th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Bradford
Exactly. In The God Delusion, Dawkins makes the claim that a universe superintended by a Deity would look much different from one that isn't. This claim comes on the heels of his spending several pages making the case that God ought to be considered a scientific hypothesis like anything else. Oddly, though, Dawkins offers no hypthesis, theory or law from science to back up his claim. So not only does he not have any scientific research that remotely deals with existence of God, he goes right on to say, without the least bit of scientific justification that if the universe were superintended by God, it would look much different than the way we find it. And this is supposed to represent the high road of scientific method and reasoning.
Please step back and give me lots of room to roll on the floor laughing!!!!:roll::roll::roll::lol::lol::lol::lol:
Comment by DonaldM — May 4, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
May 4th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Quite the opposite actually. I assumed if you were unfamiliar with the terms that you would be capable of using Google to look them up.
Well that is where he is confused. It is possible to have a moral framework without direct revelation, the very idea of Natural Law should tell us that as it goes back to the ancient Greeks, but the criticism, at least in its developed form, is that the meta-ethical foundation that Dawkins wants to provide is problematic, not that atheists can't simply be "good" people.
No doubt some ill informed people have made this claim and ill informed atheists frequently jump to the conclusion that this is the argument being made, but it is possible to be moral without direct revelation. You do not require a Mt Sinai event to know right from wrong.
The problem for Dawkins which he fails to properly address as most atheists do when they get a bee in their bonnet over this is how they can properly ground their moral reasoning.
I did an interview with Peter Singer a while back (currently unreleased) where he commented that it was simply obvious what sort of things are right and worth pursing. I agree totally, but he has no right to such an assumption on a naturalistic worldview, just as Dawkins has no right to such a basic assumption.
I'm sure some people have presented this mistaken claim, and i've met atheists who are atheists because it frees them of accountability for their behavior.
Oh I didn't claim you could get by without "religion" I just noted that you don't require direct revelation. You can't properly ground a moral system without some assumptions about proper ends for human life. Aristotle picked happiness, but a naturalist can't just pick that as a proper end to life because they deny natural functions and ends exist because of their claims about the atelic nature of lifes origins and evolution.
I can't help it if you are unfamiliar with some basic concepts in philosophy and can't use Google to look them up.
Actually i'd pretty much settle for you looking the basic terms up in Google before spouting off about how you don't understand a set of ideas that have been around for thousands of years.
I don't see why, Slavery in OT israel was not chattel slavery and served a vital social support mechanism for the poor.
It is a moral thing when it functions as a vital part of the social infrastructure and functions as an aid to the lives of the slaves as opposed to a means of subjagating them.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 4, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
May 5th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Unfortunately, for Christians and Atheists alike today, the picture we get when the word slavery is mentioned is that of white men enslaving black people in North America. Horrible – I'm sure most would agree, and the thought that the Bible would approve of it would surely make many Christians recoil in horror.
However, when seen in context, slavery in the Bible was not like that of human property without human rights, and was in fact revolutionarily humanitarian for it's time. The Bible wasn't shy about using this word even though in today's context we have words like maid, servant, contracted worker or bonded employee and shy away from applying the word "slave" to anyone. This might have perhaps been because of the limited amount of words that were usable in it's host language. I believe the slavery allowed by the Bible is still being practiced in my country, Singapore, in fact. And it's probably a good economic practice. Just because we don't call it slavery anymore doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
A readup: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html
Comment by WinglesS — May 5, 2007 @ 11:27 am
May 5th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
WinglesS wrote:
WinglesS,
If the slavery of the Bible is still being practiced in Singapore, I'd advise you to take the next flight out of Changi Airport.
Exodus 21:20-21:
Any decent person reading this knows it is wrong. It's wrong now, and it was wrong when it was written. That's why you (and the folks at christian-thinktank.com) feel the need to downplay Biblical slavery and to pretend that it was something gentler and kinder than what it really was.
Your morality comes from outside the Bible. Notice that when you see something in the Bible that violates your moral standards, you don't change your standards to match the Bible's, you change your interpretation of the Bible to match your moral standards. This leads to contortions like trying to pretend that the slavery of the Bible was a good thing, a Disneyfied version of the outrage that it really was.
It's not okay to beat someone so badly that they die after three days, regardless of what "the Good Book" says.
Comment by keiths — May 5, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
It is interesting that you accuse Glenn over at CTT of "down playing slavery". He did nothing of the sort. He just cleared up a lot of the background.
That simply is not true. Seeking to properly understand the text in context instead of reading it like a newspaper and assuming "slavery" referes to chattel slavery as practiced in the american south is not "reinterpreting the bible to match your moral standards" but simply practicing good reading technique.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 6, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
May 6th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
thesciphishow wrote:
SciPhi,
Let's suppose you're right, and that Old Testament slavery was not chattel slavery. How does that help? The verse I quoted lays it all out: You're the property of your master, and if he beats you fatally, he walks away scot free — as long as it takes you a few days to die.
Chattel slavery or not, that is brutal, despicable, and immoral.
Comment by keiths — May 6, 2007 @ 6:09 pm