Question from Jesper:
Hi, I really hope you guys can help me with this. I’ve been talking to some Christians from a local Christian youth group. They told me their reasons why they were Christians, I was a bit unsure of what to say to them, and I’d hoped you guys can give me some rebuttals to these arguments.
1. One that they all pointed out was faith healing. For example one had his hand injured at one time, then 5 others came to him and asked if they could pray for him, afterwards he could no longer feel the pain. Another guy came with the story about a 10 year old who had broken his legs, I don’t know for how long they had been broken. But after a prayer he no longer needed his crutches to walk.
2. The second one I heard was that millions of people around the world had felt and experienced God.
Hope you guys can give me some rebuttals for them, that would be most appreciated.
Answer by SmartLX:
For starters, the reasons they’ve given you are not actually the reasons why they’re Christians, or at least #1 isn’t. They were already in the youth group when they prayed for the guy’s hand, and you don’t join a group like that unless you already believe. Chances are they learned about the “millions of people” while in the group as well. This is stuff they use to convince others, but it’s not what convinced them in the first place; all it did was reassure them that they were right. I don’t think they’ve really told you anything at all about their own journeys to faith, so it’s still something you could pursue with them.
Anyway, let’s look at faith healing first.
Pain fades if the issue causing it is resolved or mitigated, regardless of whether it’s resolved by medicine, painkillers or the body itself. All pain that isn’t chronic goes away at some stage. If the guy’s hand pain went away too quickly for ordinary bodily functions to explain, it’s possible that the communal prayer session had a hypnotic and/or a placebo effect. Same with the leg guy; if pain was the only reason he walked with crutches, he might not need them after convincing himself he’d received divine relief.
Pain is highly subjective, given that it’s nothing more than a feeling. Not until 2011 were scientists hopeful of finding a reliable method to measure the amount of pain a person is in without being told, and there’s been little or no news since then. Therefore, any medical recovery which boils down to pain relief literally cannot be proven to any decent standard. It’s not really evidence for anything, especially when it’s part of an undocumented anecdote.
More generally, faith healing and specifically the healing power of prayer have not shown any significant beneficial effect, and can in fact be harmful. In one major study, patients who knew they were receiving prayers did worse than either those not receiving prayers or those receiving prayers unknowingly, perhaps because they felt there was pressure on them to “perform”. A well-known study which did support faith healing turned out to be co-authored by a man posing as a doctor.
All too regularly there are reports of people, mainly children, dying of treatable illnesses because they received prayers instead of treatment. If faith healing is real, God’s selection criteria suck. And if you’re not supposed to rely on it in place of real medicine, then what is it for?
Finally, most of the devastating sarcasm in Tim Minchin’s wonderful song Thank You God can be applied to any faith healing anecdote, including these two.
As for the second claim, I can sum up my response by adding a few words to it: Millions of people around the world have felt and experienced what they believed to be God. This feeling or experience can be anything from a full in-person conversation with God incarnate on the chair opposite them…to a voice in your head…to an inexplicable feeling of power or happiness…to practically nothing, remembered later as more than it was. The possible natural causes for each of these experiences are countless, which is probably why there are so many of them.
Another reason why they seem so common is that people only talk about them when they happen. If people mentioned every time they had prayed and not had a religious experience, the times when something did happen would seem like a drop in the ocean. Think about it: if a billion Christians each prayed three times a day, that’d be a trillion prayers a year, and that might not be too far off the actual number. A few million strange experiences hardly register on that scale.
One more point is the fact that these experiences can apparently be caused by mutually exclusive gods. Tribesmen all over the world have extraordinary experiences while dancing and praying around campfires, with and without the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Hindus have ceremonies where they put themselves into trances to be possessed temporarily by gods like Shiva. If only one true god is really causing these feelings and experiences, why is he/she/it using them so often to convince people that rival gods are real?
The Ubiquitous Supernatural
Question from Kelly:
Hello.
I am curious about how atheists reconcile their belief in only the natural world, i.e. what can be seen and touched and scientifically proven, etc., with the mass amounts of eyewitness accounts of the supernatural? Every time we turn on our televisions we are presented with such accounts of these unexplained supernatural happenings. If you look back through history these occurrences are nothing new. I personally have witnessed such an occurrence. I am just curious as to what atheists have to say about this aspect of our world that has no other explanation than that it’s supernatural. Thank you
Answer by SmartLX:
Not everything in the natural world can be seen or touched or scientifically proven. A lot of it is too far away, or too small, or can only be detected in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to which human bodies have no access. Fortunately, evidence for many of these otherwise invisible things can be gathered through scientific experiments and technological advances. In most or even all cases (depending on your philosophy) it doesn’t amount to absolute proof, but it makes these things likely enough to exist that we can confidently behave as if they do.
Supernatural phenomena, by contrast, have no such evidence available. Yes, there are countless accounts and claims of the supernatural, but the more one hears the more important it is to ask why none of these people have ever managed to produce substantive evidence for their claims. Not one verified ghost caught on camera, not one psychic established as reliable, not one faith healer with a better success rate than a placebo. Why? How?
My answer to this question has two major parts. One is that there are countless natural phenomena which can be mistaken for supernatural activity, or cause other natural phenomena to be misidentified. There are an infinite number of ways to be wrong about this stuff. The second part is that getting your supernatural story on television can be very financially rewarding if you spin it right. Whether or not it’s true, amazing = ratings, and everyone wants a piece of that. In these ways, an abundance of supernatural claims is entirely plausible in a world with no supernatural phenomena whatsoever.
It’s important to remember that to be wrong does not imply anything further. I think you’re probably wrong about the nature of what you experienced, even without hearing the story, simply because my opinion is that the influence of any supernatural entity is not present to be sensed or detected. But that’s all, I think you’re wrong. Not stupid, not crazy, not lying, not clinically delusional, just wrong.
You can tell us about your own supernatural occurrence and we’ll all see what we think of it, but in the end it will just be another account, another claim. You’re entitled to believe in it if you were convinced by your experience, but that won’t convince the rest of us. If you can’t back it up, you need to find someone else with a story they can back up, if you’re going to increase acceptance of the supernatural by even a tiny bit.
Atheism by Email, Last Century
Question from Janet:
About 14 years ago, an email circulated about a number of contradictory and outrageous scriptures in the Bible. One I remember in particular was about Lot offering his virginal daughters to a bunch of men in Sodom. I forget the rest of the examples. Do you remember that email? It was written in narrative form, not as a list of weird things. Does anyone have a copy?
Many thanks.
Answer by SmartLX:
Sorry. In 1999 I had no interest in either religion or atheism and few friends who were online, so I’m not surprised that this email didn’t reach me. I can’t track it down now either. Anyone else?
Don’t worry, because it’s extremely unlikely that the email contained any truly unique criticisms of the Bible. The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible is an excellent compendium of contradictions, cruelty, intolerance and more from throughout the 66 books of the modern Bible. If anyone does find the old email, I’d be willing to bet that everything in it is covered in the SAB. It even includes links to Christian responses to each criticism, so it’s a one-stop shop.
Patterns All Around
Question from Charles:
Why are there patterns (some mathematical), symmetry and fractals in nature?
Answer by SmartLX:
The patterns in nature result from the fact that all objects, biological or otherwise, obey certain physical laws with predictable consequences.
– If the number of a given group of organisms or biological features affects the number in the next level or generation, the iterative propagation can produce patterns like the Fibonacci sequence, and golden ratios will often follow. It’s an emergent phenomenon, rather than a design.
– Likewise, if a force acts on a substance on multiple scales, branching effects can be observed which visually approximate the infinitely dense features of fractal geometry.
– Both bilateral and radial symmetry evolved a long time ago in very primitive plants, animals and viruses. Its evolutionary benefit is obvious with regard to movement (anyone with one leg shortened by traction will tell you what a hindrance it can be) but there are plenty of other reasons for it to be favoured in natural selection, for instance accurate binocular vision.
So, the patterns we see are a natural consequence of the consistency of the universe in which we live. For a religious apologist, the next step from there is to argue that a god must be responsible for this consistency and for the natural laws that govern us. Even if there were a complete lack of other explanations, to conclude the necessity of a god would be an argument from ignorance, but fortunately there are other possibilities. One of these is the idea that the laws are as eternal and independent of the universe as the hypothetical god is supposed to be. As I’m fond of saying, any constraints you place on the universe in order to necessitate a god must immediately be broken in order to allow for a god, and there’s no justification for it.
“And must I now begin to doubt…”
Question from Jackson:
Should I believe in the Bible? I have grown up in a Christian church and I am having my doubts about the Bible and “God”.
Answer by SmartLX:
Well, I don’t think you should believe in it because I don’t think its central claims are true, like the existence of a god or the resurrection of Jesus or the instant creation of humankind in its present shape, but that’s just my opinion.
What’s important is what you think, and you can think better by learning about the issues. If you have a specific doubt about the Bible, many others probably share that doubt, so if you Google some keywords you’ll find a wealth of information and arguments. Or just use the search field on this site, because we’ve gone through all the major ideological battlegrounds at some stage. Feel free to comment anywhere with questions, even in long-dead threads, because we see it all at this end.
Don’t just look for the skeptical material, though. Ask your fellow Christians about the things that cause you to doubt, and see what you think of their answers – and just as importantly, their emotional reactions. Are they ready with an answer like the Bible tells them to be (1 Peter 3:15)? Do they try to deflect the question with appeals to unquestioning faith? Do they start to become wary of you as a potential source of doubt in themselves? Or do they just avoid the subject?
Trust me, you’re not alone among Christians in doubting the dogma, and it’s often flavoured with a significant fear of doubt. Admitting that you have your doubts is therefore an important first step towards either becoming more secure in your beliefs or discarding them altogether. Either way, it’s in your best interests to pursue this line of inquiry.
The Case for (and against) Christ
Question from Michael:
Hi again. So, although I’m an atheist, I try to keep an open mind and would consider the evidence anyone might provide for the existence of God or gods. To that end, I’ve started examining evidence for the other side. I’ve begun reading a book entitled “The Case for Christ”. I’m sure you’re familiar with it and I would like to know your opinions on this book in general.
There’s a lot of information in the book, but I’ve gotten the impression early on that the basic premise is that the Bible itself serves as proof of God and Jesus Christ as the son of God. This really doesn’t sway me at all because I don’t believe in the Bible either. That is to say I don’t believe that its ancient text is true or divinely inspired. If I did, I would obviously believe anything it said.
Is there any validity to the Bible as proof of God, divinity, or a creator? Why do Christians present it as such? Do you consider any part of the Bible to be factual? Or do you think of it merely as a work of fiction? I appreciate any insight you can offer. I’ve grown really tired of the “Because the Bible says so!” argument.
Answer by SmartLX:
The really annoying thing about a lot of Christian apologetic is that it sounds to Christians like it would be really convincing if they didn’t already believe, despite the fact that it’s not at all convincing to those who actually don’t believe. Arguing from the authority of the Bible is a prime example of this.
On a superficial level, Strobel takes the right approach with The Case for Christ: he spends the first half trying to establish the authority of the Gospels, and then argues that they’re saying Jesus actually did what Christians claim. The issue is that he does not establish the Gospels’ authority to anything like the extent that it can be trusted when it claims supernatural events. Any broad, well-accepted criteria for historical data which Strobel applies to the Bible were not created with claims of gods or miracles in mind for serious consideration.
The book’s style is that of a journalist interviewing various experts to get at the truth, but Strobel follows a hard and fast rule (feel free to correct me on this, folks): he never interviews anyone who does not already agree with him on the subject at hand. He does find some people who had previously disagreed and then changed their position, and he does ask a lot of textbook skeptical questions, but he is only ever setting up proponents of his own position with material they can use to make their case. That’s why he asks the skeptical-sounding questions himself instead of seeking responses from actual non-believers.
The Case for Christ is old enough and famous enough that it’s got plenty of fully researched responses, both in print (e.g. Challenging the Verdict by Earl Doherty, excerpts here) and online-only (example here), so I won’t reinvent the wheel by going point-by-point here. That said, if you or anyone reading has a particular argument from the book which you don’t think has been adequately rebutted anywhere, bring it up in a comment and we’ll take a look.
As for my own opinion of the Bible, while it doesn’t convince me of the truth of Christianity that doesn’t mean nothing in it is true at all. The parts concerning Jesus were most likely written long enough after the fact, and by people far enough removed from the living person(s) who inspired the story, that it’s quite possible that the authors thought they were largely writing the truth. There’s just too much material to dismiss out of hand, and I’m sure there’s a lot of real history to be gleaned from it, directly or indirectly. The hard part is separating the truth from the fiction, although some claims are easier to place in one category or the other.
Comparative Religion Books for Kids?
Question from Crystal:
Hello! Hoping you can help me. I am an atheist and my son, who is 7, is, without knowing the word, already an atheist. Not because of me but just because he is smart, logical, scientific. Which is great! But I want to teach him to be tolerant of others’ beliefs. Also I want him to be able to understand, on some level, some of the biblical references in literature. Can you recommend a comparative religion book for kids that is NOT written from a Christian perspective? he is very bright and not a typical 7-year-old boy so can understand “young reader” type books. I’m looking for something written at a higher level than a kid’s picture book. thanks!
Answer by SmartLX:
That’s the right question to ask. Many books on comparative religion are written by Christian theologians, who can’t resist adding to the basic message: “These are all the major religions and what they believe…and here, here and here is why each of the others is wrong.” We get a lot of visitors from people in Christian courses that use these kinds of books.
A good start is Our Religions, which covers seven major religions and has seven different authors (plus one collator). The section on Christianity is written by a Christian theologian, the section on Islam is by an Islamic scholar, Taoism is covered by a Taoist and so forth. The authors are there to write introductions, so while they may state their cases against each other they are still required to provide good information. While it’s not specifically aimed at kids, its introductory nature encourages simplicity.
Beyond that one, I can’t recommend any books as neutral with much confidence, but that doesn’t mean good books aren’t out there. An Amazon search can be very enlightening, though. Each of the books featured has a few bad reviews saying what people don’t like about it; people of a given religion are quick to point out when a book appears biased towards one of the others, or gives incorrect information about their own. If you want something not Christian-centric, look for the one fundamentalist Christians hate.
Finally, I should mention The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions by William Hopper, which is basically an atheist humourously tearing them all down equally and not even trying to be neutral. At least it’s honest.
Childhood Religion When Parents Disagree
Question from Michael:
I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for about 2 years now. Everything has been great for the most part. We often like to discuss things early on before they erupt later when we’re married. When we first got together I was an agnostic, then converted to Islam (which she was very happy about). My girlfriend is Jewish, but isn’t very strict in practice. She prays every night, goes to temple whenever she can, and prays before eating. That’s about the extent of it. After about a year of being Muslim I decided it was all a load of crap and became atheist (that story is much longer, but I don’t want to get off topic). She was very upset at this initially, but after I explained my reasoning she seemed to accept it.
The only issue that comes up for me is CHILDREN. I want to marry this woman, but I’m very afraid of raising religious kids. She’s VERY insistent on the children being raised under Judaism. I was raised Christian, and I know it differs a bit from Reformed Judaism, but I know how much pressure a child can have when introduced to a religious life. I really do not want my kids going through this. Just to end the argument I decided to let her win and allow the kids to be raised Jewish, but deep down inside it still bothers me. What should I do? I don’t want to break up with her over some silly superstition, but shes not going to see it done any other way.
(Also, her mother always wanted to raise her more religiously, so that’s why she feels the need to raise our kids that way.)
Answer by SmartLX:
I have a fairly devout Catholic mother who raised me and my sisters as Catholics. My father’s an atheist, and mentioned it a grand total of twice. Two out of us three kids turned out atheist, and the other believes but is hardly religious at all. While of course kids’ upbringing has an influence, you never can tell.
You could do a lot worse than Reform Judaism. Jews have no solid concept of (or at least no emphasis on) Hell, so the kids will be spared that particular trauma. Reform Judaism is one of the more liberal branches, going so far as to say that it’s up to the individual whether to subscribe to its practices and even its beliefs (outside of a few central ones, like God of course).
A big reason why your girlfriend wants to raise your kids as Jews is because Reform Judaism doesn’t consider them to be Jews even in the hereditary sense unless they’ve been raised that way. This means that their hypothetical Jewish upbringing will likely concentrate on all the things Jews ought to know (for demonstrating to family and other Jews), not what they ought to believe. This might actually be good for the kids to some extent, because they’ll be very culturally aware. Even secular Jews keep up this kind of education.
As for eventually bringing them out of it, the number one thing I can suggest is to make them aware of other religions early on. The simple fact that there are people out there who believe completely different things or have no equivalent belief is very powerful, and every bit of religious doctrine has to be seen in that light afterwards. Just the idea that religions can be compared, and therefore individually evaluated, can plant seeds of doubt.
All this is assuming that your girlfriend will stay as religious as she is now, which isn’t a given. We can go into the reasons for her belief if you’d like to comment, but speaking generally most of the atheists in the Western world were once religious, so there’s always a chance for a voluntary deconversion.
“What will my parents think?”
Question from Amanda:
Well I’ve finally decided, after many years, to tell my parents I don’t believe in gods. The only problem… I have no idea how. Any ideas that will help them understand and not hate me for the rest of my life?
Answer by SmartLX:
I get asked this question a lot, or something similar. Here and here are two of my previous answers.
The problem is that everyone’s situation is different. You’ve obviously got religious parents or you wouldn’t need to ask about this, but even if I knew as much about them as you I couldn’t reliably guess how they’ll react if you tell them. Since I don’t know whether you still live with them, I can’t say what the consequences might be if they react badly. Still, you’ve already made up your mind and you’re only asking how to go about it, so I guess I can make a few suggestions.
A pretty good rule is to try to avoid the word “atheist” (or any other similar identifier like “freethinker” or “bright”). Don’t deny it if they bring it up, but don’t start off by confronting them with a bold label you’ve given yourself. That makes it sound like you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd (as if you’d gotten a gang tattoo) and you need to be isolated and “rescued” or “deprogrammed”.
Since it’s all about you, and you’re not just the victim of evil godless propagandists, put it in terms of what’s actually happened to you: if you ever believed in gods, you don’t now, and all the church in the world won’t change that because insufficient or ineffective preaching isn’t the reason you don’t believe. Once the simple fact is out there, you’ll get a pile of questions the nature of which will give you a good idea how to proceed. If they’re to do with the horrible stigma attached to non-belief, you’ll have a chance to dispel some myths about it. If they’re aimed at actually bringing you around, you can give them a taste of some straightforward counter-arguments – not to destroy them in debate there and then, but simply to demonstrate that you’ve thought this through.
Through it all, emphasise that you’re still their daughter, you’re still you, and that you don’t think any less of them for thinking differently than you do (implying, of course, that neither should they think less of you). Recognise that if they do have a strong reaction, it will be largely motivated by genuine concern for your wellbeing, stemming from fear both of God in Heaven and of the anti-atheist discrimination you’ll suffer on Earth. Reassure them as much as you can.
Only the most extreme fundamentalist parents would refuse to have any kind of relationship with a child who’s made what he or she sees as a rational decision to be open about lacking a God-belief. If you’re even hopeful that your parents can be made to see reason in your position, they’re probably not that type, so I reckon you’ll be all right. Come back and let us know how it went in a comment, if you like. It’ll be educational to others, one way or the other.
Slender Man, Aliens, and Kids, Oh My!
Question from Jourdua:
Are there any skeptics out there who have done research on slender man, aliens, and alien abduction?
Are pictures of slender man fake?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ppyyqev1NY
Can you give me any information on skeptic research on this topic especially slender man and child abduction?
Answer by SmartLX:
In the Slender Man, we have a rare opportunity to witness the birth and early dissemination of what we know for a fact to be an urban myth. As explained on Know Your Meme, the first images of Slender Man were created as entries for a Photoshop contest on Something Awful, the object of which was to deliberately fabricate images of paranormal phenomena. (The KYM link even has an interview with the creator.) The images captured the imagination of the online community, which started cranking out videos, games, cosplay and every other conceivable kind of contribution to the Slender Man mythos.
Right now nearly everyone knows it’s made-up, but who can say how long it’ll be before a significant number of people have heard of the Slender Man without also hearing that he’s not real? At that point, he will become a bonafide mythical humanoid creature alongside Bigfoot and the Mothman – which goes to show how easily those could also have been made up years ago. The important thing, though, is that real children have nothing to fear from this new blank-faced boogeyman.
Aliens and alien abduction are of course a much broader subject, and one to which skeptics have devoted considerable effort, especially since the idea was massively popularised by The X-Files. An overview of the subject can be found on RationalWiki, and here for instance is an active forum (aligned with world-famous skeptic James Randi) devoted to analysing any such claims that may surface. The consensus at the moment is that there’s no credible threat to children or anyone else from alien monsters. Sadly, there are plenty of ordinary but monstrous humans capable of being as cruel to children as any imagined creature.
Really, the skeptical material on aliens is all over the place if you do a simple search. As they say down here, get amongst it.