Question from Chris:
I am just curious, if you dont believe in God, then what is the whole point of your life, and how did we all get here, we just suddenly appeared, I have never been brainwashed as to some people on this forum are saying, but your forum actually proves that there is a God just by the simple fact that an Atheist exists, the bible clearly says that there will be people who say there is no God, and will deny His Existence, One day weather you believe in God or not you will stand before God and if you believe in Him you will bow down in reverence and if you dont you will bow in fear, God loves you and wants you to love Him Back.
Answer by SmartLX:
Chris, you’ve managed to re-ask more questions we’ve already answered in a single post than anyone who’s ever written in. My answer will therefore read more like an index.
On the subject of purpose and meaning in life: see this list of pieces with the keyword “purpose”. We all decide the “point” of our own lives, whether we throw in with the demands of a religion or we strike out on our own.
On the subject of how we all came to be here, see these pieces on “origins” and these on “evolution” (over several pages). The idea that humans “suddenly appeared” is as far from the truth as you can get.
On the subject of possible brainwashing, see the pieces on “indoctrination”. There are many ways to bring people to belief, and though many (such as childhood indoctrination) are in some sense forcible, not all of them are. I wouldn’t dare to guess at your particular circumstances.
On the subject of Biblical prophecy, see my main piece on prophecies. The prediction that not everyone in the whole world would agree that there’s a God falls into the first category, High Probability of Success. Anyone could have guessed that at the time the Bible was written, or at any other time. It’s hardly a clear-cut case of divine foreknowledge.
On the subject of trying to frighten non-believers with the idea that they might be wrong (and that your specific beliefs might also be right, which is equally crucial), see the pieces which touch on “Pascal’s Wager”. You can’t scare someone with something they don’t think is there and, despite popular evangelical opinion, every atheist isn’t really a theist in denial.
Finally, I haven’t done a piece on God’s love yet, likely because it’s a theological topic which is moot until the existence of God is established. I’ll just say that if God exists and regularly sends people he loves to Hell, His love is worthless anyway.
The search field in the top right corner of the site is very useful for determining whether someone has already asked the questions you have in mind, so remember that for next time.
Category: Text
Louis Pasteur on Life
Question from Truk:
Evolution directly contradicts Pasteur’s laws, that state life can only come from life, as well as the laws of thermodynamics. Why does evolution, a flawed theory with more holes in it than a sponge, still stand, when it contradicts proven science?
Answer by SmartLX:
If evolution contradicted proven science, it wouldn’t still stand. That’s the whole point of science: if it’s proven wrong, it changes. The biology departments of the universities of the world don’t have the resources to maintain a massive conspiracy to prop up a bogus theory, but they have the evidence to support a sound one.
Thermodynamics first: you haven’t specified which laws you think evolution contradicts, so I’ll assume you mean the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There are several creationist arguments based on this idea, and I’ve addressed two of them here, here and here. If I haven’t covered your specific objection, comment and tell me what it actually is.
Now for the less run-into-the-ground material. Louis Pasteur only produced one “law”, and even that is only tentatively attributed to him: the Law of Biogenesis, which states that life can only come from other life. Pasteur did make such an observation, whether or not he made it official. The competing hypothesis of the day was spontaneous generation, the idea that life springs from non-life everywhere, all the time. People used to think that a bag of grain would spontaneously generate maggots, for instance. Pasteur examined many apparent examples of this, and in every case discovered that life was somehow getting in from outside and propagating.
Pasteur did not demonstrate, nor could he have, that it’s impossible for life to emerge from non-life in any circumstances. He simply established that it does not happen in everyday life, and that the life all around us is far more connected than people once thought. If genetics had been further along at the time he could have known this for certain, because all known life is genetically related and therefore descended from a single organism, a common ancestor.
This fact has an important implication: all life on earth can be explained by a single ancient event of abiogenesis (literally genesis from non-life). This means it’s to be expected that the circumstances in which abiogenesis can occur are incredibly rare, and might not even exist in the present day. However, given a billion years, half a billion square kilometres of surface area and countless different chemical compounds on this planet, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that the elements of life came together in just the right way, at least once. Living tissue doesn’t contain any element which isn’t also found in non-living material; it is literally made of the things around it.
Abiogenesis isn’t part of the theory of evolution anyway, because that’s only concerned with what life has done since it came about. Even if a god had created the first living thing, evolution could have occurred from then on without the god’s help, producing all the diversity of life from that single organism. This isn’t important to you though, Truk, because you want to establish that at least some part of the process was impossible without divine help, necessitating the existence of the divine. Abiogenesis, while unlikely in any single moment and circumstance, is not so unlikely that it can’t have happened naturally at all, so a god isn’t needed there either. Better keep looking for a spot to force one in.
This Story’s Got Legs
Question from Hans:
This one has bothered me for some years, and I’m just looking for a reasonable answer for this, other than me being crazy:
One time I was on a mountain with my dog, when suddenly the dog started to bark and run around like crazy. Calling her name didn’t do anything, so I decided to walk down again. When I came down to the forest the dog still barked like heck, I heard her from near and far. She had never acted like this before and we have encountered everything from bears to rabbits.
when I had walked over a swamp I heard my dog closing in on my position so I turned around.
It is what I saw than that bothers me: I saw two large legs walking about 3-5 meters in front of me. They also looked like they had some sort of hooves or something. I ain’t joking, there was no upper body or anything else, i was stunned. When the dog came near it, it just ran very fast and without a sound. The legs or whatever would be about one to one and a half meters long and hairy.
A friend of mine has a brother who actually claims he saw the same thing when he was a kid, at a riverside pretty close to where I was. I know this sounds crazy, but is there any reasonable answer to this other than some paranormal bullshit? can it be some animal or something about swamps that makes it look like this? im pretty sure I saw what I saw since it was so close, but what could it be?
Answer by SmartLX:
It’s not the end of the world if you can’t explain what you saw, which is good because this is a toughie. I can make suggestions, but I certainly can’t explain it fully from here. Even an exhaustive search of the forest and the swamp might not yield any useful evidence, depending on what happened.
As for suggestions, I can think of two reasons why you might not see the body attached to those legs, regardless of what kind of body it was. Either there was fog in the swamp (brought on by the humid conditions) which obscured the body, or it was camouflaged – whether naturally, deliberately or unintentionally. (Perhaps both.) So either something might have evolved the ability to blend in with its surroundings above a certain level, or the perpetrator of a hoax has one hell of a khaki jacket.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but the other major variable in this story is you. You haven’t described what kind of state you were in that day, and if something was wrong you might not have known anyway. You don’t have to be crazy or drugged to see something which isn’t there, or misinterpret what you do see. As for your friend’s brother, perhaps whatever was affecting you did the same to him.
I’m not saying that you didn’t really see what you think you saw. I’m also not saying what I think it was, because frankly I haven’t a clue. I’m just saying that without more information, and in the absence of evidence, it’s really hard for anyone else to help you figure this out. The best we can do is guess. I wouldn’t be so harsh as to say “pics or it didn’t happen”, but absolutely anything you can find in that swamp to suggest unusual activity would be useful.
That Little Flame That Lights A Fire Under Your Ass
Question from Steve:
I would consider myself an agnostic theist with no ties to any organized religion. However Atheism confuses me for its inability to acknowledge the flaws of a lack of purpose. If everything and anything you or any being ever does is without purpose, even the potential for the existence of life is illogical. Unless you are willing to admit that we do not “exist” at all, which obviously we do ( and there is alot of testable evidence that we do) then you cannot deny that purpose is a requirement of existence.
If everything ends in utter and complete annihilation then why even attempt to live life or reproduce? Or see a movie or debate with me about non existence. In the end it doesn’t matter and you never existed in the first place…. ergo atheism is incorrect because you never existed in order to prove its’ existence.
BTW I am certainly NOT a christian. I really really hate when atheists automatically assume some who objects is a damn bible thumper, whom quite frankly annoy me more than atheists.
Answer by Andrea:
Hello,
Thank you for your question. I think a mistake many agnostics and non-atheists make is to assume we atheists have a lack of purpose.
But for me, that’s anything but the case. Who is to say that one needs to have an existence eternally, such as a heaven or hell, which many religions promise? Why should the lack of an afterlife make this life purposeless?
I think when you know there’s nothing but this life, then you begin to treasure each moment. I also like to do something to improve the world every day. Makes me feel like I’m doing my part. It beats worrying if you’re going to be roasting for eternity.
If you live in the US, the National Atheist Party works to push through progressive goals to help the poor, the environment, children’s education and women’s rights, if you’re interested in finding purpose, this organization might be something for you.
Thank you for your thoughtful question.
Thermodynamics (it’s not what you think)
Question from Anon:
Hi,
I’m engaged in a discussion with a Christian friend of mine who has presented this syllogism to me:
“1. Simply put, if there is no external cause of the universe, then the universe is either eternal or self-created.
2. But, it is cosmologically ridiculous and anti-scientific (i.e. against laws of thermodynamics) to propose that the universe is either eternal or self-created.
3. Therefore, the premise that there is no external cause of the universe must be false (i.e. there must be an external cause for the universe’s existence, e.g. God)”
I believe he is applying the law where it can’t be applied, but I’ve never extensively studied science in college so I’m not really sure.
My rebuttal was that the universe was not necessarily a closed system and he responded with this:
“I have to remind you that my academic background has required me to not only understand, but apply, thermodynamics. [He has an engineering degree.] I know what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics means and it clearly eliminates the concept of an eternal universe. If there is any misunderstanding on my part, it is in what you mean by ‘the law of the universe.’ Further, whether the universe is a closed system or not is irrelevant, since the concept of a closed system is theoretical, i.e. we have never actually observed a closed system.”
Thanks and I hope you can sort this out for me.
Answer by SmartLX:
Well, it’s not the usual creationist argument that evolution breaks the 2nd Law simply by producing order, so at least it’s a change.
He’s got one thing right, the universe is unlikely to be self-created. We don’t know of anything that is, or even what that would mean if it were true. For an entity to be the reason for its own existence would require an exception to the idea that an effect follows its cause. Rather than call this ridiculous, however, I’d just say that time would have had to behave non-linearly near the beginning. It’s strange to consider, but it hasn’t been ruled out as far as I know.
To set up the next option a bit, an eternal universe would need to be one where multiple Big Bangs happen in sequence. We have to work from the scientific fact of the Big Bang to achieve a plausible eternal model, especially after Borde, Guth and Vilenkin successfully ruled out the leading eternal models that didn’t involve singularities.
Your friend’s thermodynamic objection to an eternal universe is that any process that’s already been running forever should have run down by now, because no process is perfectly efficient. There are at least two scenarios in which this is averted (possibilities only, mind you):
– The singularity that immediately precedes each Big Bang reclaims all of the matter and energy in the universe by bringing space itself back to a central point. This includes all of the “lost” energy that radiates from decaying systems and is normally declared unusable, so in the end nothing is truly lost and the universe really is perfectly efficient.
– Extending upon your friend’s response, not even the universe itself is a closed system. It receives energy from an outside source, such as other universes. If there is an infinite number of these as some have hypothesised, they can keep a universe such as ours going indefinitely. (If one takes “universe” to mean everything that exists, in other words the whole multiverse, then the idea is available that it may contain infinite matter and energy, and never have to run down for this reason instead. It’s all a matter of perspective, and to some extent semantics.)
As an afterword on eternal universes, it’s worth asking your friend exactly how he exempts his eternal God from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I hold it to be true that whatever constraints you place on the universe to necessitate a god, you immediately have to break them to allow for the god, usually by way of special pleading.
Moving on to the third option, it’s telling that your friend’s syllogism uses “e.g.” and not “i.e.” to invoke God. God is an example of an external cause, not the only possible one. The alternative suggested by the above is a concurrent or previous universe, which is part of a great many theories out there. I would love to hear your friend’s reasoning that starts from the external cause at the end of the syllogism and arrives at the Christian God, because at a glance it’s far from a logical step. (The following isn’t a scientific argument, but additional universes seem a more plausible thing to posit than a god because at least we know there’s such a thing as a universe. If your 5-acre cabbage patch has been devoured and you find one fat little rabbit in the corner, you don’t suppose that Bigfoot ate the rest; you wonder where all the other rabbits are hiding.)
Finally, there is a fourth option not covered by the syllogism: that the universe simply came into being without being created, that the common straw-man concept of “something from nothing” actually happened. Something like this is put forward in Lawrence Krauss’ new book A Universe from Nothing; specifically, that the precursor to the universe in certain models could be thought of as “nothing”. Even if you don’t accept this as quite the same thing, it at least advances another alternative external cause to compete with God.
Most of the options are essentially still on the table, despite your friend’s attempt at an argument by elimination. Even the option he wants to be left with doesn’t help the case for God very much, if at all.
As You Were, So Shall You Be
Question from Alex:
Once you believed in religion. Then you understood that they are telling you fairytales. You became a so-called atheist. When you look back now, you say: How stupid was I! Can’t you imagine that one day you will look back at your actual state – and say the same?
Answer by SmartLX:
I wasn’t stupid to believe, and neither does anyone else deserve to be called stupid solely for having religious faith, because you don’t have to be stupid to be wrong.
In my case I was raised a Catholic, lived in a majority Christian environment and never really had any reason to question the core beliefs. Once I did eventually start to question them, they didn’t last long. In the absence of external evidence one way or the other, careful examination of one’s own beliefs can cause them to change – and for some they may be strengthened instead.
I can imagine myself believing in a god in the future. Maybe I’ll have some traumatic experience and rationalise it in religious terms while still badly affected, possibly thinking my sanity and my will to live are contingent on the existence of a god. Maybe I’ll have a religious experience under the influence of a drug, a medical condition or sleep paralysis, and think I’ve seen Jesus. Maybe I’ll fall in with a crowd of Christians and talk so much theology with them that I forget I’m taking God’s existence as read for discussion’s sake. Or maybe God will change my heart directly, like He’s supposed to.
There are tons of reasons why I might change my mind later, but hardly any of them need me to be wrong right now. The undeniable possibility that I will one day believe in God again does not make God any more likely to be real. It just means that it’s difficult to stay entirely rational for one’s whole life, even about important things like this.
What’s in a name? Or a closet?
Question from Jim:
Thanks for the work and effort that goes into your podcast, I enjoy it immensely. I’ve found that using the term “coming out” as an atheist, always requires a lot of explanation. But that’s alright, because it opens up the conversation, to other issues. Such as the issuance of titles. Namely why we have to use a title. Would titles be necessary if it weren’t for the title “Christian”? Did this title not open up this Pandoras Box? Or maybe even the title “religious”?
Answer by SmartLX:
I don’t think the term “atheist” would be needed if there weren’t a large number of people with opposing viewpoints.
The term “abolitionist” was relevant in the United States only until slavery was successfully abolished. Nowadays it’s assumed that (nearly) everyone there is opposed to slavery and would work against it if it returned, so everyone’s an abolitionist and there’s no point using the word to refer to individuals.
Likewise, “atheist” is a term for someone who rejects a popular position, namely theism. If religious belief declined until it were as rare as, say, political anarchism, there’d be no more reason to call someone an atheist than there’s reason to call someone a non-anarchist. It would already be assumed, and instead the theists would need to speak up.
As for “coming out”, its meaning for gay people is common knowledge, so it shouldn’t be too hard to transfer it to other revelations of people’s private nature. Atheists in certain places have just as much reason to be “in the closet” as gays, so it’s just as meaningful when they “come out”.
By the way, we don’t do a podcast, so the one you enjoy is by someone else. Jake did a few short videos some years ago, but that was it.
The Big Spill?
Question from Jethin:
Space, Time and matter expanding from a tiny spot as formulated in the big bang theory still looks to be confined especially to the question of where and how all the stuff came for the bang. What if the universe that we see is a part of a recycler that create a multiverse and our universe is just one of numerous other universes. A universe like the one we live in could emerge from the tip of a crater of an ultimate system of all creations wherein matter in the form of pure energy is spurted out from a central cauldron holding finite quantum of energy at enormous pressure and temperature. Like a lava flow, energy from this casing could escape through vents in the space-time fabric at higher dimensions, thus creating may be three or multidimensional universes. Studies on CMB radiation and the results therein leading to inflation theory of sudden expansion still call for more observational validations. Could this sudden expansion of our universe be triggered by the super charged energy outflow at tremendous pressure and temperature from an extra dimensional boiler?
What happens to all the matter that fall into a black hole? Spaghettification, singularity, Hawking radiation, black hole evaporation and what more, all such possibilities have been studied but still there is something missing. Should there be a link between singularity and big bang elsewhere; may be a link that is routed through that ultimate crucible of all creations. Like a reservoir, matter in its pure energy form could be encased in such a place from where the distribution starts to create different universes. The feeding source into it could be black holes pulling in materials from their own universes, stripping to its primal form and gushing into the mother pot. Is our universe a part of that energy-matter recycler that has been going on indefinitely?
Answer by SmartLX:
No freaking idea.
There are a great many models for explaining the beginning of the modern universe. Some posit that the Big Bang really was the beginning and some do not make that assumption. Every so often evidence comes to light that rules out one or more models, leaving the rest as candidates for what really happened. What you describe is closer to some of the surviving models than others, and so far I see no obvious reason to rule it out.
The important thing about your hypothesis for the purposes of this site is that it does not require the initiative or the intervention of a deity. It’s been some time since cosmologists turned to God to explain the as yet unexplained, because they’ve had no need. They might resort to God to explain the impossible, but they haven’t come up against that yet.
Evolution: The Fossils Say Nothing, ‘Cause They’re Dead
Question from Thinkingman (in an unapproved comment last week, rescued from the static archive of the old site:
When “The Atheist” was asked if he believed in evolution he replied, “of course I do” as though evolution was as provable as “gravity”. If that is the case then
1. why are scores of very accomplished scientists moving away from the ‘theory of evolution” toward intelligent design?
2. And how can the “theory of evolution” be considered real science when it contradicts the second law of thermodynamics or “entropy”?
3. And how can evolution be accepted as an immutable fact when there are no fossil links that have ever been discovered indicating one species has morphed into another? There should be tens of millions of such fossil records.
Answer by SmartLX:
Seriously, people, it’s just an archive now. Comments aren’t approved there anymore. I go and check for new ones sometimes, and bring them here if they’re worth answering, but it’s not a reliable way to make yourself heard. Comment here instead.
As is my habit, I’ve added numbers to Thinkingman’s questions for easy reference. All three are classic creationist talking points, and answers to all three in their stated forms are widely available – which means the important thing to Thinkingman is not to find answers, but to disseminate the questions as widely as possible, to help them persuade the uninformed. Unfortunately for that cause, ask [questions] and ye shall receive [answers].
1. Yes, scores of accomplished scientists reject the theory of evolution by natural selection and embrace the hypothesis of intelligent design or ID. (For those who criticise evolution as being “only a theory”, remember that ID isn’t even that.) “Scores” is fairly accurate, because it literally means multiples of 20 (“four score and seven years ago” means 87). The Discovery Institute’s famous 2001 petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism collected the names of just over 200 biologists, while the other 500-600 signatories were in unrelated fields (making their “accomplishments” largely irrelevant). Even in the United States, where acceptance of evolution is badly affected by a high rate of religiosity, about 0.01% of biologists appear to oppose it. The scientists in relevant fields who do reject evolution remain statistically insignificant, and their numbers do not seem to be growing in relation to the total.
2. The theory of evolution does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics because, despite the creationist assumption, the second law of thermodynamics does not completely prohibit the emergence of order from chaos. This law merely requires that any new order in a physical entity is balanced out by an increase in chaos or entropy in another entity connected to it by a transfer of energy. Our sun is a raging, barely-contained nuclear wildfire which bombards us with energy, so there’s no problem.
3. So-called transitional fossils are largely a matter of definition. It can be argued that fossils of any species no longer living are transitional fossils, because they capture the species in the process of changing from whatever they were previously into whatever they became.
What creationists generally expect to see in a transitional fossil (and celebrate when it isn’t found) is the properties of a hypothetical trans-genus hybrid, or chimera. The commonly ridiculed example is Ray Comfort’s crocoduck, which demonstrates the unreasonable assumption most often made: that a transitional fossil should show one modern animal “morphing” into another. Modern creatures are distant cousins of each other, not ancestors and descendants, so one would never become another.
Regardless, comparable processes of pronounced physical change have occurred over geological time, and they are very obvious in certain fossilised animals. Here are the two most famous examples:
– Ambulocetus, literally a “walking whale” with identifying characteristics both of modern whales and of the quadrupedal mammals from which they evolved.
– Tiktaalik, a creature partway through the process of evolving from a fish into a four-legged amphibian. (For more detail on Tiktaalik and much more evidence for evolution besides, read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.)
This is all basic, well-known stuff, but I’m of the opinion that it benefits the cause of reason to increase the rate at which supposedly rhetorical “challenge” questions are accompanied by straightforward responses when they appear. The above does just that.
Arrogant Atheists Anonymous
Question from Aaron:
Hey guys,
I’ve been pretty solidly atheist for about two years now, and one attribute of religious perspectives that irks me is the arrogance they exude. Such arrogance is often entirely unintentional, but to proclaim knowledge about something that is entirely unprovable does require at least some arrogance on a believer’s part. One of my favorite aspects of atheism and skepticism is the admission that most things, even seemingly solid scientific fact, cannot (and should not, in my opinion) be stated as 100% certain.
Unfortunately, this arrogance that I myself formerly had as a devout religious person is difficult to get away from. I live in a particularly religious region of the US, and I often find myself feeling somehow superior to, or wiser than, the religious people around me because they believe in something that makes no sense to me. I don’t voice such opinions, of course, and I try constantly to remind myself that there is always the possibility that my convictions could be flawed or wrong, but it can be very difficult NOT to feel this way, particularly when the religious perspectives fly directly in the face of science or logic (which feels like most of the time).
Any ideas for reigning in arrogance and keeping myself grounded?
Answer by SmartLX:
Here’s a mantra for you: Being right doesn’t mean you’re smart, and being wrong doesn’t mean they’re dumb. Whatever wacky fundamentalist beliefs you may come across in your area, there are bona fide geniuses and high-level academics (not necessarily the same thing) who believe exactly the same things and work to defend them in the public square. There are also some real boneheads who are in complete agreement with you on this particular topic.
The reverse is also true, of course; there really are intelligent atheists and proudly ignorant and uneducated believers. A large majority of studies even suggest an inverse correlation between intelligence and religiosity. However, you cannot reliably apply a population-wide correlation to individuals. Any given believer could be one of the smart ones.
So, how can smart people get something like this completely wrong, and not see why? It can have a lot to do with the foundations of their reasoning. An argument or line of reasoning can be valid and sound given its premises, but actually completely wrong if one or more of the premises is false. You’ll find that for many believers, the existence of God is itself a premise rather than a conclusion. (I therefore suspect that many arguments for God are originally formulated backwards, e.g. “God made life, so…1. life exists, therefore 2. God exists.“) It’s a premise because it’s drummed into believers from early childhood, or particularly intense “religious experiences” have made them emotionally invested in the idea, or in a few cases they’re getting paid to advance a particular view.
It’s not like this for everyone though. People may have correct, reasonable premises and still reach the wrong conclusion through flawed reasoning. There are a huge number of logical fallacies that are easy to apply (indeed, difficult not to apply) and will not be obvious or even visible to many.
There’s also the possibility of cognitive dissonance. If a particular conclusion is desired, then even if one avoids making an appeal to consequences (see the list of fallacies), one will subconsciously be more accepting of poor logic that reaches that conclusion. Two real world examples:
1. Software pirates: “Those who take goods without paying are thieves. I take software without paying. Therefore, I…am NOT a thief because software isn’t real goods, and everybody does it, and information should be free, and…”
2. Prison rapists: “A man who has sex with men is homosexual. I’m having sex with this man. Therefore I…am NOT homosexual, because this man is now a woman. I’ve made him my bitch.”
I’ll leave you to imagine how religion can inspire this kind of mental swerving to avoid the unthinkable.
There are any number of ways to get something important completely wrong, and many have nothing to do with intelligence or the other innate qualities of individuals. You’re entitled to be confident (not certain) that you’re right, but if you’re right it implies only one thing about those who disagree with you: not that they’re stupid, or ignorant, or mad, or lying, but that they are wrong. If you think it’s worth correcting them, go for it, but there is no good reason to be judgemental purely on this basis.