Category: Uncategorized

God is Good, Existence Notwithstanding?

“Atheists aren’t entirely blind to the possible benefits of religion. Its perils, however, are substantial enough to make any judgement of its ultimate worth on its own merits very difficult.”

Question from James:
Why must atheists be just as equally hard core biased about their beliefs as Christians?

I do not believe in the existence of a deity. Although I do highly condone God. As no one can logically argue that “God” is not simply the best thing for mankind.

I just want to know why despite your beliefs you can fail to see reason, and even if there is no God, why shouldn’t we all just pretend for our own sakes?

Answer:
Some non-believers are nevertheless very supportive of religion, like you. They argue that believing in gods is beneficial even if the beliefs themselves are false. Philosopher Daniel Dennett calls this position “belief in belief”. Biologist-blogger Jerry Coyne calls it “faitheism”.

When trying to logically determine whether belief in gods or in a particular god is ultimately beneficial, you need to look at both sides of the issue.
Pros: There are in fact several studies which show small but significant differences in happiness, health and longevity between theists and atheists, always in favour of the theists. (Atheism is generally favoured in studies which focus on certain other attributes.) Fear of God may very well encourage good behaviour, though it’s not the only way to encourage this.
Cons: believers may devote huge amounts of time, money and effort to their churches which might be spent more productively, they tend to antagonise members of other churches and religions, and they live their lives by laws which may not in fact be backed by an absolute authority, and therefore may steer them wrong.

Atheists aren’t entirely blind to the possible benefits of religion. Its perils, however, are substantial enough to make any judgement of its ultimate worth on its own merits very difficult. In the absence of a clear verdict, atheists like me tend to encourage people to be atheists, simply because there don’t appear to be any gods.

– SmartLX

Jesus Unscriptured: Josephus

“This is a real Jew of the establishment we’re talking about. He stayed a Jew all his life which means it’s very doubtful he actually thought Jesus was the Messiah, which is what “Christ” meant in a Jewish context.”

Question from C.L.H.:
Christians sometimes point to “independent sources” or historians of Greek or Roman history in validating the existence of Jesus and historical truth of the Bible.

For example: Flavius Josephus wherein he writes about Jesus the Christ.

“Chapter 3 – Sedition Of The Jews Against Pontius Pilate. Concerning Christ, And What Befell Paulina And The Jews At Rome

3. Now there was about this time Jesus , a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”
(from Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

I know there are several other historian accounts that are often referenced, but I can’t recall them right at the moment.

What are we to make of this “history”?

Answer:
The other day I covered independent references to Jesus, and the evidence for him in general. I’ll focus on Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum this time.

In my other piece I said that the document was a battlefield. It’s been disputed since the 17th century, because although it’s the most direct (and flattering) extra-Biblical mention of Jesus we have which was apparently written in the first century, there are many reasons why it might not be entirely genuine.

Its positive affirmations are a major sticking point. It says, without qualification, “He was [the] Christ.” Elsewhere it says he rose from the dead after three days. Josephus isn’t obviously saying that this is what Christians think, he’s apparently flat out saying it happened.

This is a real Jew of the establishment we’re talking about. He stayed a Jew all his life which means it’s very doubtful he actually thought Jesus was the Messiah, which is what “Christ” meant in a Jewish context. He also did a lot of what amounted to PR work for the Romans who weren’t keen on prophesied kings. Had he actually written and released this passage at the time, as is, he’d have been thrown to the lions figuratively or literally.

The passage comes to us via a set of Greek manuscripts, the earliest of which dates back to the 11th century. That means about a thousand years went by in which changes might have been made. In the third century, after reading the Testimonium, the Christian historian Origen wrote that Josephus “did not accept Jesus as Christ”. The version he read at the time, therefore, was likely to have given a different impression than the one we have.

From this fact alone, apart from the likelihood that the Testimonium was changed at some point to be more Christian-friendly, we can deduce one more thing: that Josephus probably did write something or other about Jesus. That isn’t saying much, because in his original piece he might simply have recounted the story preached by Christians without saying that any of it was fact.

I won’t go through the other arguments against it, but suffice it to say that there’s plenty to argue about.

In general, documents such as the Testimonium Flavianum reveal credibility issues as soon as you scratch the surface. That doesn’t mean they’re all false, it just means that the standard of evidence they provide isn’t earthshaking right now.

– SmartLX

Ask from the Past: can it ALL be wrong?

“Only faith makes a miracle seem at all likely, all things considered.”

(When the archived ATA site was restored, a short list of unanswered questions were found in the approval queue. I’ll be answering them here in Ask from the Past.)

Question from Mike1234:
What about all the things that people have seen like ghost or anything physical or somthing happening out of the norm, is it all just mental and in your head. There have been so many things that people have seen or strange things happening to people that you may of never heard, but in order to not believe in a god everything would have had to been mental or proved scientifically.

According to what i have heard people have had broken arms healed in front of their face and even someone on tv said they have seen a limb regenerate in front of their face.Yes i know some people can be liars, but for every sigle one to be a lie or just something mental would be really rare out of the all those people who had a experience which is probably tons and tons of people. People have become unblind physically at crusades or other supposable things happening according to what i have heard.

Or somebody on tv said that god took him to hell and then brought him back. He said he came out of his body and was physically in hell and then Jesus took him out telling him that many of his own people don’t believe in this place. His wife saw him on the ground holding his head and then jesus brought him back. He said it wasn’t a dream and it was real.or what about some guy getting hit by a semi or car or something and was told by police that he was dead on arrival but somebody, who happened to be a christian out of nowhere started praying for him for about maybe 15 minutes or so, and im not sure if he even knew the guy or not, and the guy cam back. The guy who was hit talked about his experience and how he actually saw a gate ahead of him and how the bible describes it and all, but as soon as he was approaching it he went back into his body.

I am not saying that this is true or anything even though the people sound like they are really telling the truth, but for every single experience to be a lie or something mental or something that can be scientifical would be hard. It would seem like it would take more faith to say that everyone of those is a lie or something else rather then to believe one and have to believe in some type of divine being.

Answer:
It would take something akin to faith to say with absolute certainty that every one of those claims was utterly false, especially without hearing them all first-hand. That’s why atheists don’t tend to do that.

Perhaps a man did manage to regenerate a limb on the spot, I don’t know. I’ll wait for the evidence, if any. Since it’s extremely unlikely given the little that I know about human anatomy, I’ll assume for the moment that it didn’t really happen. If I’m wrong and evidence comes along later, I’ll be surprised and fascinated.

You raise an interesting point about the sheer number of extraordinary claims, Mike. Just how unlikely is it that all of these people are either wrong or lying? Not as unlikely as you’d think at a glance. Even if several such claims emerged every day, you must remember that such claims are picked up and trumpeted by the media wherever they’ve come from. Out of six billion people, if something has a chance of a million to one you would still expect it to happen to six thousand of them. If it’s newsworthy, the whole world might well hear about most of them.

What’s more difficult to calculate is the probability of a miracle, versus the probability of a lie or an error. What makes a lie likely is that telling an extravagant lie often gets a lot of attention, and can be profitable. You can usually understand why a claimant would be lying if he or she is. What tends to make an error likely, on the other hand, is usually the state of the claimant at the time of the event. You can imagine what I mean by that.

Only faith makes a miracle seem at all likely, all things considered.

– SmartLX

Ask from the Past: The EPR Paradox

“A quantum physicist I ain’t, but I know they get upset when quantum mechanics are essentially used as pseudoscience.”

(When the archived ATA site was restored, a short list of unanswered questions were found in the approval queue. I’ll be answering them here in Ask from the Past.)

Question from Linkinism:
You can find information on this and quantum mechanics in many books and websites. How do you interpret this information? One with faith may interpret these theories and postulates as proof of a higher beings existence, but how does an athiest view these things?

Answer:
With great interest, but not a lot of concern.

A quantum physicist I ain’t, but I know they get upset when quantum mechanics are essentially used as pseudoscience. The usual formula is this: according to quantum mechanics, something extraordinary happens for which there is no explanation. Therefore, God (or whoever you want) makes it happen.

The EPR paradox goes a step further than claiming the extraordinary. I won’t go into the details, but not only does it imply that incredible things happen but the three scientists who came up with it used it to argue that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory. As a bonus, the E in EPR was Albert Einstein.

Things have come along since 1935 but we know full well that quantum theory is currently incomplete. The most glaring omission is that it has no explanation for gravity. (A theory of quantum gravity is one of the big goals right now.) That means there’s lots of room for a God-of-the-gaps for those who want to insert one, but it hardly makes it necessary to do so.

Just because there’s no explanation for something yet doesn’t mean a god is the only possible explanation, so theists can’t make much of a proof out of the EPR paradox or any other area of science which is relatively poorly understood. That doesn’t stop some from trying, or at least declaring that there is a proof to be had.

– SmartLX

Ask from the Past: What Am I?

“Going by the word alone, an atheist (a-theist) is someone without a theistic belief. That includes deists.”

(When the archived ATA site was restored, a short list of unanswered questions were found in the approval queue. I’ll be answering them here in Ask from the Past.)

Question from friendlyagnostic:
I go back and forth between deism and straight up agnosticism, so normally I call myself an agnostic deist (not theist). Most of the time I don’t know and I really don’t care (unless religion is in my face), but when I do think there might be a “higher power”, I think of it in deistic terms. theism makes no sense to me. I would never be arrogant enough to say “I know” or that “I can prove” b/c this is impossible. I consider myself a non-theist. however, according to the defintion on rrs’s website, I am considered an atheist too, just b/c I am not a theist. Is everyone who is not a theist an atheist? Am I, even with my deistic leanings? I honestly want to know……thanks

Answer:
A deist is not a theist, that much is clear and easy.

If you think there’s a good chance of a deistic god, but you don’t know, then you’re an agnostic deist. That’s pretty clear too. So we just have to work out what else you could be called at the same time.

An atheist by the everyday definition is someone who doesn’t believe in gods of any sort, even deistic gods. That rules you out.

Going by the word alone, though, an atheist (a-theist) is someone without a theistic belief. That includes deists.

Regardless, I couldn’t comfortably call you an atheist without qualification, because the way people understand the word it includes the position of a-deism.

If you really wanted to nail it to the letter, you could say that you’re an atheist but not an a-deist. If I shared your position, though, I wouldn’t bother. I’d just self-identify as an agnostic deist and not worry about whether I was technically an atheist too.

– SmartLX

Ask from the Past: Religion, Family and Children

“Given how hesitant you are to come out of the closet, are you certain you’re the only one in there?”

(When the archived ATA site was restored, a short list of unanswered questions were found in the approval queue. I’ll be answering them here in Ask from the Past.)

Question from Watcher:
I’m a deconverted ex-theist who lives in the Bible Belt. I was raised Southern Baptist and, as far as I know, all of my family is religious. I have young daughters and my mother has approached me saying that she is ‘dissapointed’ that I am not indoctrinating her grandchildren with religion. The main problem is that I have found myself unable to tell her that I am now an “atheist”.

Knowing that she does this out of love, and truly believes that they will go to Hell if I do not take steps to make them accept Jesus as their Saviour I find myself in a quandry. I’m still rather bitter at religion myself and at first thought would rather raise them to question theological claims.

This situation has the potential to create a serious rift in my family. Heck it would have been better if I was just gay. That wouldn’t create near the controversy. But now I don’t know what to do. She would probably go into a mental ward if she knew the truth about me. I work with people that don’t believe in evolution and believe in a young earth. I have no idea where to find advice for my situation where I live.

Answer:
I think you’re dead right about the potential impact of declaring yourself “atheist” in a staunch Southern Baptist family. In some places and communities the word has a really disproportionate stigma.

However, give your mother more credit. That you’re not Bible-thumping your girls and that you probably don’t go to church much will have at least made her realise that you’re not very religious anymore. (I find “not religious” to be a great euphemism for “atheist” if I don’t want a conversation to suddenly be about that.) That you no longer believe might not be such a big shock.

If you capitulated but only at a surface level, you wouldn’t be the first parent teaching your kids family traditions for the sake of their grandparents. You haven’t said how old the girls are, but what if they were in on it, so to speak? What if your stance toward them were like this? “Listen, it’s really important to Grandma that you learn this stuff, and can say it when you’re asked, but whether you believe any of it is up to you.” Even better, if your daughters are going to learn prayers and catechism anyway, why not grab some library books and make a comparative religion class out of it? They might find it fascinating to learn about Zeus and Buddha as well as Jesus.

If you’re not willing to go that far, then you probably will have an unpleasant confrontation or two on your hands. For your daughters’ sake, of course you’ll leave them well out of it until you and your family reach an understanding. Look on the bright side: you might get lucky and find kindred spirits within the family. Given how hesitant you are to come out of the closet, are you certain you’re the only one in there?

Given that this is an Ask from the Past, I hope you get this and it’s still of some use to you, and things have gone well in the meantime.

– SmartLX

Ask from the Past: Evolution vs Creation Conundrum

On the “croco-duck”: “Birds evolved from reptiles, all right, but you’re never going to find a fossil that shows a transition between two modern species.”

(When the archived ATA site was restored, a short list of unanswered questions were found in the approval queue. In Ask from the Past I’ll be working through them.)

Question from Katoi5:
I am in the difficult process of completely renouncing my faith, I’m pretty much an Atheist, but I think I am more of an agnostic. My problem is with Creationists and how they are insisting that there are no transitional form fossils in the fossil record and Evolutionists insisting that there are several.

Since I can’t physically see these fossils for myself I can’t prove to myself once and for all that they are in fact real. Who can I believe? For any Atheist who has seen or knows for a fact these transitional forms exist, please let me know and perhaps tell me where I can find out more about them. If in fact there are transitional forms, then are creationists lying or do they really not know?

Thank-you

Answer:
As Richard Dawkins explains in his new book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, there’d be plenty of evidence even if not a single fossil had been unearthed, let alone obvious transitional forms. As it happens, there are lots of them.

All fossils are transitional in a sense because evolution is an ongoing process. The three most famous fossilised creatures who make great examples are Ambulocetus (literally “walking whale”, a huge sea mammal who hadn’t lost his legs yet), Tiktaalik (partway between a fish and an amphibian reptile) and “Lucy” the Australopithecus afarensis (a primate with an ape-sized brain and an upright gait). In each of these skeletons, both the type of animal it evolved from and the type it would eventually evolve into is startlingly obvious.

It can be difficult to see the fossils in person, for instance because “Lucy” is in Africa where she was found. If you have the resources and the mobility, however, they really do exist and you can go chasing them if you really need to. Otherwise, Google Images can quickly round up photos and drawings of them from all over.

Individual creationists may deny the existence of transitional fossils for any of several reasons:
– They haven’t heard of the famous ones.
– They have heard of the famous ones, but they’re trying to persuade those who haven’t. (Sophistry alert.)
– They maintain a definition of “transitional fossil” which does not match the reality. (Take Ray Comfort’s famous “croco-duck”: half-crocodile, half-duck. Birds evolved from reptiles, all right, but you’re never going to find a fossil that shows a transition between two modern species. There isn’t a straight line of descent between distant cousins.)

While as I said the complete absence of fossils would not harm Darwin’s theory, the well-known transitional forms we do have make the process of evolution just that little bit more visible and comprehensible. That’s anathema to creationists, hence the campaigns of denial.

– SmartLX

Atheism and the Bible

“If there’s no God, and Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, it doesn’t mean that every single word of the Bible is false.”

Question from Sigurd:
If I belive in science and darwinism and do not belive in any god what so ever.
But I belive the persons in the bible are stories of actual people and their lives.
Am I then an atheist?

Answer:
I think it’s safe to say that you are.

If there’s no God, and Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, it doesn’t mean that every single word of the Bible is false. Some characters are known historical figures: Pontius Pilate, King Herod, Caiaphas and several different Pharaohs. Many events after the Resurrection probably have some truth in them, as they concern the early mortal Christians’ doings and are light on miracles. At the very least the Bible is set in some real places, such as Jerusalem and Memphis (in Egypt, not America).

Not believing in gods is what makes you an atheist. If you’re of the opinion that the Bible is accurate to a lesser extent when it comes to more mundane matters, it makes no difference unless it then convinces you that the Biblical God is real.

– SmartLX

“The Literal Word of God”

Question:
Evangelists and others often claim that “the Bible is the literal Word of God”. Putting aside whether it’s true or not, what does it actually mean?

Answer:
Google the quoted phrase to find lots of instances of the claim, and also lots of rejections of it. Both sides tend to confuse two possible meanings the phrase could have, so here they are nice and separate.

“The Bible is the literal Word of God” could mean either or both of the following:
1. The Bible is literally the Word of God. All those words on the pages really were composed by God.
2. The Word of God in the Bible is literal. God’s words are intended to be interpreted literally.

Some people are nice enough to spell out that they mean one or the other. Surveys of belief usually offer option 1 explicitly (again, Google the phrase in quotes), and some participants select it. Young-earth creationists defend option 2, arguing to the hilt that Creation took place in “six literal days”.

Option 1 is difficult to either establish or debunk, because even the most zealous Bible-thumpers will say that God wrote through the minds and hands of human “authors”. Short of going back in time and doing brain scans, we’ll never be absolutely certain that their writings weren’t the products of their own brains.

The most common way of supporting option 1 is to argue that the Bible makes prophecies, and statements about the universe, which history and science have since confirmed. I’ve addressed this sort of thing already.

Option 2 is a theological matter, because you have to presume the existence of a god before you wonder what it meant by something it wrote. That said, it’s extremely difficult to defend a 100% literal reading of the Bible. There are passages which, unless taken metaphorically or figuratively, are for example false even in a Biblical context (Genesis 2:17) or deadly (Proverbs 3:3).

Most Christians reject option 2 and take some or all of the Bible as metaphor. Many more also reject option 1 and allow that the Bible is simply a book written about God, and that any perceived issues with its contents don’t reflect badly on Him. Therefore the quoted claim in my title and the confusion it creates are irrelevant to most. However, for the minority that do shout it from the rooftops (clearly, I’m a metaphor man) and those who worry about their influence or are under it, it’s important to clarify this profound statement before accepting it, rejecting it or just discussing it.

– SmartLX

Faithdrawal Symptoms

“There are things outside of religion to fill the hole you feel, despite what religions say.”

Question from Former Believa:
I was formerly a hard core, truly devoted, sincere believer.

Then “pop” … awareness, englightenment….and emptiness.

When your whole life is grounded in the belief in a supreme being, and you remove the premise of god and eternity. It changes your perspective. That’s a huge gap you’ve got all of a sudden.

It’s heartbreaking and depressing. I feel judged and misunderstood by practically all believers and “spiritual” people.

Where do I go from here?

Answer:
Sometimes, when people stop believing in gods, certain assumptions related to their former belief stay in place. It sounds obvious but it’s important to specifically consider that if you were wrong about the existence of the god you once worshipped, you were also wrong if you thought that this god was the only possible source of love, happiness, logic, purpose, fulfillment or anything else, as long as these things exist in any sense. There are things outside of religion to fill the hole you feel, despite what religions say.

You’ve realised that your life has no purpose which is predetermined by some absolute authority. If you’re explicitly looking for a new purpose in life, you could let it come to you in a similar way: externally, from non-absolute authorities (but at least ones you know exist) such as peer groups and organisations which could use you in their plans. Before you resign yourself to that, though, why not see whether you have your own goals to achieve? Is there perhaps something you wanted to do when you were younger, but put aside in favour of religious pursuits? Maybe you could pick it up again. If you don’t find a new purpose immediately, you can take heart from the fact that when you do find something real to which you want to devote your time, you’ll be free to do so.

An eternity in Heaven can be comforting to look forward to, but it’s also a lot of pressure. One step out of line, according to the old dogma, and you swap it for an eternity of torment. You never really know what constitutes a step out of line, at that, so if you’ve made one you might not know to make up for it.

That’s all behind you now. There is great relief in the realisation that you don’t have to please some overlord who doesn’t tell you what he wants and condemns you if you fail him. You can get on with the business of living this one life for all it’s worth.

Believers in gods and other supernatural stuff often do judge and misunderstand non-believers, sometimes more than they do followers of different faiths. If you want that to stop, you need to talk to the believers you know. You might not bring them round to your position, but chances are you’ll be able to clear up some misconceptions about it. (There are many.) It’s difficult to get people to seriously consider the tenability of their own positions, but it’s much easier to help them see a certain amount of sense in other people’s positions, for example yours. Empathy is easier than self-analysis.

I can’t tell you how to live your life and I wouldn’t presume to, but I’ve spoken to a lot of people while they go through this transitional phase you’re in. (It’s why many feel the need to Ask the Atheist.) I can tell you that it is just a phase, which I’ve decided to name faithdrawal. Those who don’t relapse into belief do eventually get more comfortable with its absence. I know I did.

– SmartLX