Theology

You know, this *almost* seems like a parody, but I recognize enough of the Westboro crowd in it to know that it is serious:

I left a comment on J.L. Hinman's blog Metacrock a few days ago complementing him on his predictable use of The Courtier's Reply when responding to an atheist. I then went on about my life and promptly forgot all about it.

Well, I stumbled back onto his blog today and noticed that he replied to my comment.

Three times. In a row. Each time becoming more incoherent than the last.

Fun!

The original post that I replied to is here. My original reply is a few comments down.

My latest reply to his nonsense is below the fold.

On my route today, I drove by a rather prosperous looking church. You know the kind. They have a message board by the road. Some of these are used to announce sermon topics or upcoming activities, like fish fries, Christmas pageants or book burnings. A lot of them, however, are used to harangue passerby with a Christian Thought of the Day.

The ubiquitousness of this practice leads me to believe that there is an extremely successful sign salesman somewhere with a free book of profound-sounding quotations, like 'Let Go or Let God.'

Today, the sign said, "The Greatest Evil is our Indifference towards Evil."

I gave this statement some careful though, as one is able to do when one has forty miles of rural interstate to drive and a broken XM radio.

This statement says a great deal about Christianity.

One reason is that the sign itself is symbolic of the Christian insistence on getting out in your face with their Righteousness. This is the building equivalent of a street preacher condemning passing strangers for their sins. This sign doesn't mean that this church has a problem with indifference to evil. It means that they think you do.

A few days ago, in another post, Jim mentioned that he misses the Colonel. I don't think he meant that literally, instead I think he meant he misses the argument provoking fantastic claims the Colonel would make. In a sense, I agree. It's fun to have someone around who challenges logic and reason. I think we all enjoy a good challenge.

Good news! The Colonel has been immortalized. No, he didn't die and go to heaven. What I mean is that you can listen to the Colonel on YouTube. Well it's not actually the Colonel but if you listen you will understand what I mean. This is a 1 hour debate between a Christian apologist/philosopher named Greg Bahnsen and relatively obscure atheist writer named George Smith.

Bahnsen eerily makes many of the same absurd arguments that the Colonel did right here on UTI going back a few months. He has trouble with the definition of atheism and constantly refers to the atheist's "worldview." He has trouble believing in morality without god. He twists logic so badly it comes out looking like a pretzel. Now do you remember our friend the Colonel?

Us poor, poor atheists. So lost, with no redeeming social value. Enemies to all that is good and true and right.

At least, that's what Dr. Roger Olson, a professor of theology in George W. Truett Theological Seminary at baylor University would like you to think.

Oh, he loves us individual, lost little atheists, but considers atheism to be "the enemy"

Well, golly, gee-whiz, Perfesser. You've got that whole "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing going on, don't you? That maker you feel all special and superior to us poor little atheists?

[Dr. Roger Olson] I feel sorry for atheists. They are so much in the minority in American society and they are bound to feel some marginalization if not persecution.

Christians should be the last people to persecute anyone -- including atheists. But that doesn't mean Christians have to accommodate atheism as they tolerate and love atheists.

We have to recognize atheists' full freedom to believe God does not exist, but we don't have to embrace atheism as a social good. In fact, I would argue that atheism has no redeeming social value.

Ah, the bigotry disguised as compassionate tough love. He's got that down to an art form. He's going to love us all into becoming good little Christian robots - whether we like it or not. Because he knows what's best for us, apparently, and we're just all deluded by Satan. You see, atheists don't really exist, according to Doc Olson.

[Dr. Roger Olson] But most atheists demonstrate their basic trust in the meaningfulness of reality by being outraged at evil and injustice, thereby demonstrating that atheism cannot be lived out consistently.

What makes something evil or unjust if nothing like God exists -- if nature is all there is? Only subjective choice either by an individual or a society. But that can change and it often does. Without God, the social prophet has no way out of relativism.

Baylor and universities like it exist to promote objective values and meaningful existence.

For them atheism is not benign, but the enemy -- even if atheists themselves are not.

Finally, let me repeat that I have nothing against atheists as persons and neither does Baylor University.

But in my opinion, they are people of character and virtue in spite of their philosophy of life -- not because of it.

People like this make me nervous. They posses an absolute fanatical certainty in this un-evidenced magical man in the sky, then they combine it with the pursuit of a selfish bit of societal acclaim for their faux-altruistic compassion towards the nasty, mislead atheists. This could lead eventually to rounding us up and herding us all into compassionate, loving "re-education centers" - for our own good, of course. Because we obviously can't be trusted to think for ourselves, according to people like Dr. Olson.

Semantic games aside, Dr. Olson, atheists and atheism aren't the enemy. Asserting that they are is adding to the problem, not helping it.

We don't want your pity, we don't want your twisted brand of selfish compassion, and we don't want your "some of my best friends are atheists" bullshit.

Tell you what - you start treating me like a fellow human, and I'll do the same. Sound fair to you?

Last weekend a friend sent me a link to a long piece in the New York Times titled "The Politics of God", written by Columbia University humanities professor Mark Lilla. It was a difficult week here for me, so I didn't get around to reading the full article until this morning. I recommend you do so at your first opportunity, since the meat of the thing will help you to understand a fundamental threat that we face...it's just not the fundamental threat that the author of the piece talks about.

ABP has a whole article dedicated to little old me today. I am honored.

As I have mentioned before, I regularly mess with the kooks at anklebitingpundits.com and it appears that I seriously got under their skin the other day. Remember the recent article here on UTI about the Pope's recent comments? Well, they had a slightly different take of course and my comments started a shit storm. They are still talking about it. Not the Pope. Me. Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, and will be torturing them some more today.

Feel free to join in the fun.

Vox Day asks a question:

[Vox Day] If Al, Brent and anyone else feels like pitching in, I'd appreciate it if you'd refresh my memory of some of the more common reasons given not to believe in God or Christianity, other than the basic "there is no proof your sky deity doesn't exist". I just want to make sure I don't miss any of the usual ones. I've already got these six, what am I missing?

1. A loving God wouldn't send anyone to Hell.
2. Omnipotence-Omniscience conflict. (I thought knowledge WAS power.)
3. The problem of evil.
4. Euthyphro.
5. I don't like God / If God exists, I wouldn't approve of him anyhow.
6. I believe in one less god than you.

I'm sure I'm missing a few, so don't hesitate to chime in.

Well, I would not call this a basic reason for being an atheist. Proof only counts in mathematics and liquor. Plus, it is worded wrong. It should say:

"There is no evidence that your deity exists."

...not,

"There is no evidence that your deity doesn't exist."

Double negatives only confuse the issue.

Now, it is correct to say that there is no evidence that a god of any sort exists in any real sense.

(Sorry, all you folks who will almost certainly be visiting from Vox's site, but anecdotal "evidence" isn't evidence at all. No one cares about your amusingly touching personal triumph over adversity aided by your imaginary friend named Jesus. If you cannot measure it, it is not evidence. And no again, sorry, but we are not talking about legal, courtroom shenanigans as "evidence" either. Physical evidence is what I'm talking about.)

That is not to say that evidence won't turn up at some point in the future, but simply that, to date, there isn't any.

The six arguments Vox lists are great fun to discuss in philosophy class, or within blog comment sections, but ultimately nothing more than mental masturbation.

The bottom line for me is that there is no physical evidence that a god exists. All the rest of the arguments are merely refinements on that basic point, as far as I'm concerned.

...I trimmed my fingernails.

OK, let me explain.

***

20 years ago, as I was working on a MA in Lit, I had to fulfill some language requirements. I already had a BA in German, so decided to branch out a bit, and did a couple of semesters of Old Norse. I never really was very good with the language, but did develop an appreciation of a whole world-view and literature with which I had been previously completely ignorant.

Now, if you've ever read any of the Viking sagas (there are plenty of good translations available), or the Eddas, there is a whole lot of Norse mythology in there. If you're not familiar with this literature, except by reference from modern culture, it is worth looking up a couple for some reading - the level of violence in the culture as seen in something like Njal's Saga is most impressive. But even more interesting is the complete difference in mythology and mindset in the pre-Christian era: it is surprisingly bleak.

"I need a toothpick."
"No, mom, you had a toothpick after dinner. You picked your teeth for 40 minutes."
"I need a toothpick!"
"Why?"
"'Cause there's something stuck between these front teeth."
"You just brushed your teeth. There's nothing there."
"I can feel it."
"Let me look." (Looks. Nothing there.) "There's nothing there but your gum, swollen from picking at it so long earlier."
"I need a toothpick!!"
*sigh* Whisper, that only I hear. "Oh, not this again."
"I need a toothpick!!"
"Mom, there's nothing there. I just looked. Really."
"But I can feel it!!"
"No. You picked at it so long..."
"When?"
"After dinner. You had a toothpick for over 40 minutes."
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"But there's something there! I know it."
"Mom, I just looked. THERE IS NOTHING THERE. You just brushed your teeth, and rinsed..."
"I did? When?"
"Just now. Just two minutes ago."
"But I know that there's something stuck there..."

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to CommunionBlog.)

Roy Abraham Varghese, theistic apologist and god-bothering author from the "Institute of Metascientific Research", was recently interviewed by the Dallas Observer. Varghese is widely credited as "the man who won over Anthony Flew", and is now currently working on a book called "There Is A God" with Flew.

Varghese is an interesting character because his contention is that without a meta-intelligence, all science devolves into incoherence if you drill-down deep enough, or pull back far enough.

It's a lot of pseudo-scientific nonsense of course, a philosophically slick update to the theistic evolutionist's mantra.

More below the fold...

This is a repost from 2005. Happy Easter, folks! -Brent

Happy Easter! May the big, fluffy divine Easter Bunny deliver unto you colored eggs from His own body saying, "Eat of these tasty hard-boiled treats, for this is My flesh."

*shudder*

That was definitely a visual I didn't need.

Easter weekend always seems to be the time when Christians all over the planet lose what's left of their collective minds in an orgy of religiosity where they commemorate the torture, death, and resurrection of one of their gods, Jesus Christ.

Nominal, "Jack-Christians" -- who never, ever go to church, or read the Bible, or pray, or think about their religion at all during the rest of the year -- strap on their God-Gear™ and troop off to the nearest church with their families in tow to show off how very pious they are to their neighbors - and if they play their cards right, maybe get them a little Jesus Juice. They attend local Passion Plays and weep and pray fervently, asking the bloody zombie god up there on the cross to please, please please forgive them for not praying during the whole last year so that he won't, uh, eat their brains or something. I dunno. It's very complicated, apparently.

Stodgy, uninteresting Christian Philosophers in particular shine during Easter weekend. I mean, the news agencies need to to find some "expert" to quote. They are writing these incredible, unbelievably silly stories about the wacky Filipinos nailing themselves to crosses and the the confluence of torture, blood, colored eggs, bunny rabbits, and resurrection. It's a tough weekend to be a reporter, let me tell you! So, they go and talk with the Respected Christian Philosophers™ like Alvin Plantinga to get a juicy quote or two and attempt to legitimize these weird, wacky stories that are popping up all over the place like banner ads at a porn site.

Alvin Plantinga delivers, of course. He's a brilliant, brainiac philosopher, after all. Alvin says sexy, quotable things like,

[link] [movie star Raquel Welch] "enjoys very little greatness in those worlds in which she does not exist."

That's gold, baby!

However, Brilliant Philosopher™ Plantinga - and his embarrassing, not-so-bright cousin, Pretend Philosopher™ D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Ft. Lauderdale Florida - also have quite a bit to say about the "evidence" and the possibility of the physical resurrection of their incarnated god-man, Jesus Christ.

We'll start with D. James Kennedy. In a recent article, Mr. Kennedy, citing exhausted, retired, possibly senile new deist Anthony Flew, and a 19th-century law professor, concludes,

[link] After more than 40 years of inquiry, it is my firm conviction that the scope and strength of the evidence for the resurrection is such that one cannot both reject the resurrection and, at the same time, believe in any ancient event.

Huh.

In the same vein, Alvin Plantinga has this to say about a specific miracle like Jesus' Resurrection,

[link] According to Mr. Plantinga, the initial probability of any such claim is low, though it would obviously rise if Christians are right that Jesus "is the incarnate second person of the Trinity."

Alvin Plantinga. Brilliant Philosopher™, Master Of The Obvious.

Two can play at that game, Plantinga! *shakes fist*

"The initial probability that I am an alien from Planet Zebulon IV is low, though it would obviously rise if my followers are right about me being an actual alien from Planet Zebulon IV."

[link] The external evidence, assessed by Oxford's Richard Swinburne and others, includes the Apostles' Easter testimonies and the dramatic spread of their belief. Mr. Plantinga finds this convincing: "Maybe it's not knockdown, drag-out 100 percent conclusive evidence, but it's pretty strong evidence."

How is this strong evidence of anything that they claim? What the heck happened to the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule of thumb? Parsimony demands that we look for simpler solutions first, Alvin, and that we do not immediately jump to the most ludicrously complex and convoluted explanation of the facts. Christ on a pogo stick. Sir Ockham must be spinning in his grave.

Okay, let's look at the "evidence" that Christians claim as evidence of the bodily resurrection of their incarnate god-man.

• The "dramatic spread" of the Christian belief.

The Christian faith didn't start spreading significantly away from it's starting point until a few score years after Christ's alleged death. This is perfectly consistent with the way a new meme or idea would spread without mass communication. The religion of Mithraism spread in much the same way - through person-to-person communication.

• The Easter Testimonies of the disciples.

Dan Barker's Easter Challenge has conclusively shown that the contradictory mish-mash of accounts of the Easter story given in the Bible are not evidence of anything at all, except confusion - and maybe and ancient version of the "Telephone Game".

• The empty tomb.

*sigh* What's the more likely scenario? You make the call!

1. The human person named Jesus who accidentally became a religious figurehead in the early first century (Follow the shoe!) was executed by the ruling government and the dominant religion's leaders for sowing sedition and discord among the populace. After he was executed, his followers removed his body from the tomb (for whatever reason) by perfectly non-supernatural means. Then, they tacked on the title "Christ" to his name, played up the martyr angle, and told each other increasingly fantastic stories about their savior's magical powers. It was great fun. After a while, they even deceived themselves into thinking that it was true! Centuries of telling and re-telling of the story, combined with human's incredible propensity to exaggerate and elaborate on a sensational, attention-getting tale, plus our species' noted interest in the religious, created a myth that eventually became the centerpiece of the Christian religion.
2. God exists. He incarnates Himself by making a human virgin pregnant, then having her deliver Himself in a barn on Christmas Day. He wanders the Middle East and preaches common platitudes and morality stories in mysterious parables, doing miracles and talking to Himself. Then, in a fit of pique at the stupid dunderheaded nonsense that His creations believe in and do to each other and themselves, he sees that they are all a bunch of evil sinners (even though He created them that way), and sacrifices Himself to Himself to break the rules that He Himself wrote. He dies in agony and torment on the cross to make His sacrifice to Himself more poignant and thrilling for 21st-century Movie watching Christians, and also to reward His faithful servant Mel Gibson with hundreds of millions of dollars. He is dead, placed in a tomb, then is physically and bodily resurrected by Himself to full life using his special God magic. Two thousand years later, Filipinos repeat His courageous act without any God magic and get infections from the rusty nails. God thinks that they're pretty god damned stupid to be doing that without any God magic, so he heals their infections, but lets them bleed all over each other because, let's face it, blood's pretty cool. Mel agrees with him. He looks down approvingly at the tormented Terri Schiavo, comforting her silently as she is starved and thirsted to death because She will be the New Messiah, His Only Begotten Daughter. He lovingly answers every one of President George Bush's sincere Christian prayers to Him because America is Under God, dammit, regardless of whether or not some cranky atheist doctor/lawyer or a few dozen idiot atheist bloggers agree. To Hell with them! Literally!

It's more than likely that the Jesus myth contains a seed of truth somewhere at it's core. There was probably a 1st-century teacher or religious figure named Jesus. He was probably executed by the local Roman government. Even this is not really certain, but it's at least believable and probable.

However, just because he might have existed does not mean that god exists, that Jesus was the literal physical human manifestation of this god, that he died and rose from the dead, or any of the rest of it. People want to believe in something greater than themselves. They always have, and sadly, they probably always will. The Jesus myth simply happens to be one of the most common and widely-practiced versions of "believing in something greater then themselves", for the last two thousand years. To us short-lived humans, this seems like an eternity, so this particular magic god-man myth seems eternal.

It's not.

If we had lived in Sumeria five thousand years ago, the god Enki would seem like an eternal truth to us. We seem to be wired for it.

Ah, well. Happy Easter anyway, folks. I hope you and your families get together and spend time with each other. Because that's the real important thing about holidays. Sharing your time and yourself with the people you love. I do it every chance I get, regardless of the origin of the holiday.

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail. . . Yes. Much better than buckets of blood and torture. Let's go with that.

Well, he's smarter than me, so he must be right. Right?

The favorite scientist of the religious Has Spoken. Yup, Francis Collins, he of DNA and the Human Genome Project fame, has a new commentary on CNN.com talking about how it's really OK to be both a scientist and a believer. Here's the juicy bit:

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

Denverite Sara Miles was an atheist all her life. Then, something happened to her that changed her almost instantaneously into a devout Christian.

She, uh, had an, um, "intimate relationship" with, ah, God.

[Sara Miles] "It was pretty good bread, a nice whole-wheat bread. The other was that God was alive and in my mouth. It was bread, and it was God."

Whew! Didn't this movie air on Cinemax last Friday night after midnight? Steamy!

Seriously, though, I think it's wonderful that she has decided to live her life caring for and providing charity for the less fortunate in our society. However, attributing the good feelings and the sense of well-being and accomplishment she feels when she gives of herself in that way to an invisible, magical man in the sky is just plain self-deception.

Altruism is ultimately selfish, regardless of the good being done, because of the sense of self-worth you gain from the act among other things. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that.

But turning the responsibility for your good work over to magical sky pixies is just silly, in my mind.

She may have been an atheist at some point in her life, but being an atheist does not make you automatically smart, or logical, or trained in critical thinking. Remember, "atheism" simply describes a person in whom god-belief is absent. Nothing more and nothing less. Some atheists are lacking in god belief due to a process of exploration, inquiry, and discovery. Other atheists, like Sara I suspect, just never thought about it very much until she walked into that church and was overwhelmed by the religious, emotional experience.

No mystery there. Spiritual feelings of being a part of something greater than oneself are extremely powerful. I've felt them myself from time to time throughout my life. It's a wonderful, euphoric feeling.

But it's still not a mystery, and it's definitely not an all-powerful superbeing who lives beyond time and space in a sparkly happy candyland and loves each and every one of us so much that he comes alive in our mouths after bread has a spell cast upon it.

Ew. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Baroness and Rabbi Julia Neuberger, a Panelist for the Washington Post's "On Faith" section, and a member of Britain's House of Lords has written this brief missive:

[Baroness Neuberger] The mass media has a problem with religion, partly because it is extremely bad at teasing out the details of difference.

Unsubtle in its approach, it sees extremes as the same as moderate views, orthodox as parallel with liberals, eastern traditions as being polytheistic, and basically appears to have and demonstrate little understanding.

This is not to say that there are not amongst the media, mass and otherwise, extremely sensible, well informed journalists who know otherwise and whose learning is considerable- but their ability to explain in a context which requires instant simplification is much limited.

For that reason, the mass media makes a poor showing in reflecting and explaining modern religious practice and belief.

So, I responded.

[Brent Rasmussen] Baroness Neuberger,

Is it the media's responsibility to "tease out" the tangled, incomprehensible, incoherent, irrational details of yours or anyone's religion?

All religion is comprised of highly detailed rituals that only strong adherents to the faith would know the fullness of.

Why should the generic "media" be expected to know those things? Are they supposed to all become Rabbis before writing about Judaism? Priests before writing about Catholicism? Imams before writing about Islam? That would leave them very little time for writing, I would think.

Maybe the real reason why the media makes a poor showing in reflecting and explaining modern religious practice and belief is because modern religious practice and belief is *inexplicable*.

Care to place a wager on whether or not she responds? ;)

This morning's This I Believe essay is by someone who is an engineer but with a solid science background, and it outlines how he went from belief in some kind of fundie religion (unspecified, but references in the essay make it clear it was some kind of 'Biblical Inerrancy' cult) to Deism (though he doesn't come out and call it that - I suppose it is possible that he doesn't know the history behind his current belief.)

A couple weeks ago, Brent wrote about a 'thought-experiment' conducted by Vox Day, considering his reaction to the instruction from God to kill toddlers. It was all nice and theoretical, a mental exercise about morality on the part of Vox Day.

Except it isn't just theoretical. There is clear research showing that religious sanction increases violence, particularly in believers, but even among ostensible non-believers:

Public release date: 23-Feb-2007

When God sanctions killing, the people listen

New research published in the March issue of Psychological Science may help elucidate the relationship between religious indoctrination and violence, a topic that has gained renewed notoriety in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In the article, University of Michigan psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers.

The other night my good lady wife returned from meeting with friends to say that one of our mutual friends wanted to get together with me "to debate religion." She went on to say further that he was going to "brush up" on some things, because he was sure that he "could prove that God exists to me."

*Sigh*

This is a friend, so when the time comes and he feels properly girded for battle, I'll have him over. We'll grill some steaks, open some beers, and talk. And the first thing I am going to ask him is to "Define: God."

Because I will want to establish just which of the many battles we are going to have - it's been my experience that getting this one issue out of the way up front simplifies all that follows. Is it the God of little children, the simple Sky Daddy who lives up above us and makes the ponies run? Is it the background 'Prime Mover' of theologians, who is only found in the deep and abiding love we feel but cannot prove? Is it the vengeful God who hates fags and wants women to be subservient to men, and men subservient to their local Shaman?

*******************

"See you in hell."

Jim Downey

First of all, I apologize for my (second) long absence. In addition to finding out I had to move and then actually having to move within the course of 30 days, I had two family members die - one before and one after Christmas, so this has been a pretty hectic and emotional time for me these few months.

One of the first things I noticed (other than the fact that when you reach the age of 35 your friends and family will no longer help you move) was how death brings people from all religions together, but tends to exclude atheists. If death is the end, then what does it matter? Why even bother attending a funeral if you don't believe in God? It can be very upsetting and sometimes depressing to realize that one day it will be me that dies. It is a very hard reality to face.

But I also spent a good bit of time watching astronomy shows with my son (thank you Science Channel), who wants to be an astronomer when he grows up. (It is amazing to hear a 10-year-old boy tell me that he wants to invent a telescope that will allow humans to see ‘dark matter’). One scientist made a particularly astounding comment, and I paraphrase; ‘every molecule of matter on this planet and in our bodies was forged in the center of a star somewhere. So when we study the universe, we are actually studying ourselves.’