Where’d it all come from? Religion, that is?

“The Christian religion three days after Jesus’ death, if you believe any of what’s written, was fewer than twenty people, none of whom had yet written anything of note.”

Question from Caalia:
Did the bible start the Christian religion? In other words, were there believers in yahweh, his creation,the ten commandments, etc. before the compilation of the bible?

I heard the bible was written years after the said events (be they fictional or factual). If so, where did the believers in Yahweh before the compilation and writings of the bible get there ideas from? What was there source, if not the Torah, or the bible?

Answer:
There were certainly believers in Yahweh, creation and the Ten Commandments before Christianity, and before the Bible as we know it was completed, because those are all Jewish beliefs as well as Christian.

These events are all laid out in detail in the Torah, which is actually the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy from what’s now the Old Testament. As far as anyone knows it was started over a thousand years BC and finished five to six hundred years BC. People believed in these things and passed them down through their families long before they wrote about them. Literacy was hardly widespread in the ancient world.

Specifically Christian beliefs, i.e. those pertaining to Jesus, began during Jesus’ supposed lifetime, with people claiming he was the Messiah. Stories about his resurrection began soon after the supposed date of his execution, and the Gospels were written something like five to fifty years after that when there was already a fairly large population of Christians.

Generally speaking, “sacred” texts are written to spread beliefs, not to start them. They’re written by people who already believe, or at least want others to believe. The Christian religion three days after Jesus’ death, if you believe any of what’s written, was fewer than twenty people, none of whom had yet written anything of note. Only years later did they commit it all to parchment.

– SmartLX

Atheism is F***ing Metal

” I haven’t pinned down whether members of Atheist are actually atheists, but I can’t imagine a Christian band calling itself Atheist, can you?”

Question from Brian:
Me again. This is a little bit different than my usual questions, but do you know any really good atheist metal bands?

Answer:
You can’t go past Atheist. I haven’t pinned down whether its members are actually atheists, but I can’t imagine a Christian band calling itself Atheist, can you?

You’ll find more atheist musicians here, including two members of Slayer.

– SmartLX

Talking to God

“Many are convinced that their personal gods have spoken directly to them. The speakers are different, contradictory gods for different people in different places, mind you, so at least someone out there has to be completely sincere and yet wrong.”

Question from Brian:
Hi, it’s me again. I’ve been in many arguments with christians in the past few weeks, and there’s just one thing I don’t know how to respond to. What is the best way to respond when they say they’ve personally talked to god?

Answer:
It’s easy enough to talk to God, but getting Him to talk back is hard if He’s not there, and unless you record it there’s no way to prove it.

Many are convinced that their personal gods have spoken directly to them. The speakers are different, contradictory gods for different people in different places, mind you, so at least someone out there has to be completely sincere and yet wrong.

So, assuming just for the moment that a believer’s particular god either doesn’t exist or just didn’t really speak to him, how can he/she (he, henceforth, for convenience) be so sure it talked?

Foremostly, he wants it to be true. Perceived direct contact validates his beliefs, whether new or lifelong, and is a great honour to boot. Even if he’s in some doubt as to whether it’s true, he might still claim certainty in order to convince more people to seek God.

On top of that, any of a number of things might have happened. He could have dreamed it and not realised. He could have interpreted what he thought God’s answer would be as God putting the answer directly into his head. He could have been in something resembling a trance (evangelical group prayer methods, like many others, can sometimes approach hypnotic techniques) or on some substance (knowingly or unknowingly) and interpreted just about anything as God. Or, of course, someone else could have been pretending to be God.

No believer who’s really convinced that God spoke to him will accept (immediately) that any of the above might be the case instead, so in answer to your actual question listing alternative explanations probably isn’t a good response. Perhaps it’s better to generalise: “There are any number of ways in which that might not have been God talking to you.”

Ultimately, people who claim to have talked to God are trading on their own credibility. If they don’t know you well, they’ll talk that up as much as they can, probably making other claims worth examining. Otherwise they’ll use something akin to Lewis’ Trilemma: that they’re lying, mad or telling the truth, and they’re not lying or mad. The response to this is quite simple: you don’t have to be lying or mad to be wrong.

– SmartLX

Untouchable

“So when you criticise religion these days, you encounter people who 1. are on some level shocked that you would do so, 2. may not think they can argue effectively with you and 3. have passed judgement on you because of your criticism and may not think you’re worth arguing with.”

Question from Brian:
Hi, it’s me again. Why is religion given such an untouchable status in the minds of so many? They think they can say whatever they want, but if we respond it’s a “personal attack”.

Answer:
The following is a gross over-generalisation, but that doesn’t stop it from being essentially true.

2 or 3 generations ago, Christianity in Western countries was happily assumed to be the religion of everyone you were likely to meet. Arguments over religion either happened between Christian denominations, very occasionally between Christians and Jews or in universities where nobody was listening. In this situation, not only was there no reason for anyone to criticise religion as a whole, anyone who did was attacking beliefs apparently held by society as a whole, beliefs which were there for the good of all. Atheism had little or no public presence and those who knew its position on such things didn’t sympathise with it.

There are a great many people who think we still live in that world, and judge recent public criticism of relligion in that light. Religion is Good, and attacking something Good is Bad. Also, religion hasn’t had to seriously defend itself in public for some time, which means many believers haven’t learned how. There are a lot of crash courses going on now, after the advent of “new atheism” (which is really just ordinary atheism after a few authors made everyone take notice), but it’s still not a universal skill.

So when you criticise religion these days, you encounter people who 1. are on some level shocked that you would do so, 2. may not think they can argue effectively with you and 3. have passed judgement on you because of your criticism and may not think you’re worth arguing with.

On top of all this, there’s another line of reasoning which shows no empathy with anti-religionists at all. Basically, some people don’t understand why anyone would criticise or attack something given to us by God, who is all-powerful and loves us. This doesn’t take into account the fact that other people don’t think there is one, or think there’s a different one. It’s roughly the same logic that causes people to threaten atheists with Hell. This thinking does exist despite the obvious flaw.

As for criticising the non-religious, whether it’s honest or not there’s a catch-all rationale for it: it’s good for us, we need it, they’re doing us a favour.

– SmartLX

Ghosts: Physical Evidence (…not)

“…just because you can’t explain something doesn’t make it supernatural. It merely makes it unexplained – so far.”

Question from Edgar:
I’ve met people who claim to have experienced, or known someone who has experienced, physical encouters with “ghosts”. They claim to have been scratched and had witnesses who testified to them(the scratches). Also, some claimed that they shared paranormal experiences. By that I mean, multiple people seeing or hearing the same thing. How can two or more people hallucinate, or imagine the same exact thing?

I am 19 years old and have considered myself an atheist since 8th grade. When a theist finds out I am a non-believer, they feel they have to challenge me. I have no trouble providing overwhelming evidence(to them) regarding evolution vs creationism. However, I am always stumped when the subject of ghosts emerges. When I am at a loss for words, and they feel they have “defeated” me, they inform me(in their most condescending tone) that I am so naive. That I will one day learn the error of my ways. I need help.

Answer:
If people feel they have to challenge you, imagine what they throw at a website called Ask the Atheist.

To address the specific claims above, just because someone has real scratches doesn’t mean a ghost made them (anything could have), and assuming you have several people claiming the shared experience instead of just one guy saying others had it too, if something looks or sounds like a ghost in the first impression when multiple people are present, they may well think it is a ghost and reinforce each other’s belief or credulity.

Speaking more generally, what you’re dealing with is either anecdotal evidence or at best circumstantial evidence. The stories of shared experiences are not accompanied by photos or recordings so that others might share in them, so stories or anecdotes are all they are. The scratches might have been made by a ghost, or they might be from scraping a wooden bookcase without noticing before or during the event. None of it proves anything, or goes any distance towards establishing any facts.

Even more broadly speaking, just because you can’t explain something doesn’t make it supernatural. It merely makes it unexplained – so far. Out of the possible explanations, even if they’re quirky or unintuitive, it’s worth asking out loud whether all the natural explanations combined are less likely than an actual ghost of which there is now no trace.

If you’re dealing with any famous claims, rather than friend-of-a-friend stuff, send them in as questions or comments to this question and I’ll see if I can help with some basic research.

– SmartLX

Changing Christians

Question from Brian:
Hi, I’m a recent christian turned atheist. I’ve found multiple atheist friends at my school, and they’re closer than I’ve ever had before. But there’s only one problem: I love this girl, but she’s a hardcore christian. She refuses to even consider anything beyond her blind limitations. Do you have any ideas for me? I’d really appreciate it.

Answer:
Just as there are as many specific rationales for Christian belief as there are Christians, there are as many specific escape routes as there are ex-Christians. There’s nothing which works for everybody, and the process can take so long that you don’t know what really did it. I took 15 years.

So, help us out by providing the answer to this question: why, as specifically as possible, does your girlfriend believe in the first place? If you know this already, or if she’ll tell you when asked, great, otherwise try to figure it out. I don’t think you’ll get far without this information.

Get back to me in a comment and we’ll have a think about it.

– SmartLX

Dawkins’ Reasoning

“For something like a god to form by any known undirected process, it’d have to start out simple and proceed slowly.”

Question from Amber:
In his book “The God Delusion”, Professor Dawkins states that given the improbability of life originating in the universe, the creator would presumably have to be as improbable, if not more. Please expound upon this, for I do not quite understand why probable creator cannot do improbable things without being improbable himself(I say ‘himself’ for the sake of convenience). Also, Richard notes that the creator of the universe would have to be a simple one (to start out from nothing?), God is complex thus he could not have created the universe?

Answer:

Creationists and other theists argue that one reason life must have been deliberately created is that it’s so complex. By that logic, God as understood by most religions is even more likely to have been created because an all-powerful, all-knowing being would have to be more complex than any known life, or even the whole universe. If God exists without a creator, why is is less likely for beings infinitely less complex, like you and me, to do the same?

Dawkins’ other point is that complexity in the universe has arisen very gradually over time, right up until the first living things existed and could design their own creations (most likely pre-human primates shaping rocks). Life, for example, took a billion years after the formation of Earth just to get started and then a billion more to get past microscopic organisms. For something like a god to form by any known undirected process, it’d have to start out simple and proceed slowly.

If on the other hand God can have existed forever without having formed at all, why is it less likely that the (less complex) universe itself has always existed in some form? Why does the insertion of an even more complex entity into our origins help us at all?

– SmartLX

The Anthropic Principle

“…the nature of people (hence “anthropic”) is that we consider only the aspect of this calculation which gives a low probability and therefore makes us feel special.”

Question from Alanis:

In Richard Dawkins’ widely acclaimed book “The God Delusion” he dedicates a few pages to the Anthropic Principle, emphasizing that it is an alternative to the argument for fine tuning/design, rather than a factor of it. Please elaborate on what Richard could possibly mean by that. From my (admittedly weak) understanding of the anthropic principle, all it states is that given the fact that we are here to observe it, it should not be surprising that life originated in the universe. I do not see how that debunks or supports intelligent design in any way.

Answer:
Dawkins’ point relates to probability. The fine-tuning argument as it relates to Earth, for example, is that it’s so staggeringly unlikely that Earth would be just the right size, distance from the sun, elemental composition, etc. that it must have been created specifically so that life could exist here. The anthropic principle is that we would be considering the same thing from whichever planet we had emerged on.

The sheer number of planets in the universe (probably within one order of magnitude of the number of stars, about ten thousand billion billion) goes a long way towards balancing out the low probability that any given planet will produce life, giving the universe as a whole a more reasonable chance of naturally producing life somewhere. Even so, the nature of people (hence “anthropic”) is that we consider only the aspect of this calculation which gives a low probability and therefore makes us feel special.

Of course there’s also the fine-tuning argument which relates to the whole universe, not just the planet. The anthropic principle applies in that case if you consider the possibility of a multiverse. That hasn’t been confirmed or debunked, but there are other replies to that sort of fine-tuning argument which don’t rely on the anthropic principle at all so it’s not a critical point.

Games of chance make a good analogy. Whoever wins the lottery feels special, or even blessed, but they forget that millions of people have also played and the chances that someone won’t win the jackpot decrease rapidly as successive weeks are considered. The chances for an individual are millions to one, but someone’s going to get rich eventually.

– SmartLX

The Atheist’s Riddle

“Perry Marshall presents himself as an invincible defender of his supposed proof of an Intelligent Designer, standing atop a mountain of vanquished counter-arguments from hordes of atheists.”

Argument taken directly from Cosmic Fingerprints:
1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.
2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.
3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind.

Answer:
Perry Marshall presents himself as an invincible defender of his supposed proof of an Intelligent Designer, standing atop a mountain of vanquished counter-arguments from hordes of atheists.

The plain logical error in the argument is in the second premise, and it’s the one logical fallacy I come across more than any other: an argument from ignorance. “There is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.” That’s not the same as saying there really is no such natural process (which would be a simple unsupported statement rather than a fallacy), but it expects us to assume as much. Is Mr Marshall, or any human alive, familiar with “all codes” in the universe? What qualifies anyone to make such a sweeping statement? This attempted proof by elimination of the origin of DNA must leave room for unknown alternatives to maintain any honesty, and is therefore not a real proof.

I realise that the fact of the logical error is not such a brilliant counter-argument when you’re actually trying to convince people. There are plenty more objections, and Marshall has posted and replied to many on his site. He hasn’t always done so convincingly, though you can judge that for yourself. I’ll just take one approach as an exercise.

As support for the argument that all codes are designed by a mind, Marshall argues that random processes do not produce information. (I’ve been through this at length, years ago.) His primary demonstration is his own text-based random mutation generator which takes a sentence and, through single-letter changes, turns it to nonsense.

Marshall admits that the mutation utility does not simulate natural selection, the non-random element of evolution. Furthermore, he’s not interested in adding that functionality to test his own argument. (He says instead that the reader is free to do it for him. Several people have, beginning thirty years ago with Richard Dawkins’ “Methinks it is like a weasel” program and continuing with browser-friendly programs like Mutate.)

He argues that natural selection would only create sensible sentences if words only mutated into other meaningful words, but that’s not applying natural selection at the letter level. An ideal extension of his program would present several choices of mutation at each step, and allow those letter mutations which destroy the legibility of a word to be manually or automatically ruled out. (The real world equivalent is a serious birth defect, which would keep a creature from breeding or even living long enough to breed.) In Marshall’s program, detrimental mutations are allowed to compound until all sense is lost. Of course we won’t likely get anything useful out of it.

Forgetting even the mechanism of natural selection, I submit a basic argument for the possibility of chance creating information which I’ve used before: think of a large grid of squares which can be either black or white, but all start as white. If you randomly pick the colour of every square at once, there is a chance, however small, that the newly black squares will form a simple but clear picture of a rectangle, or the letter G, or Elvis. Without adding any extra material, chance can increase the amount of information the grid provides. The prebiotic chemicals only had to manage a feat like this once, given potentially unlimited opportunities, to come up with DNA or its precursors.

– SmartLX

Naturalistic Pantheism

“The only practical difference between a naturalistic pantheist and an atheist, therefore, is that an atheist doesn’t bother to call the universe a god. It’s just a universe.”

Question from Jim:
I wanted to ask you if atheists in general, consider a person who is naturalistic pantheist to be an atheistic person.

Answer:
Generally, I think we do. I certainly do.

A pantheist thinks that God is everything, that is, the whole universe. The naturalist view is that the laws of nature, whatever they may actually be, cannot be broken. A naturalistic pantheist, therefore, thinks that God is beholden to His inherent natural laws and cannot go against them to serve His own purposes. In other words, not only can’t He perform miracles, He can’t make anything happen which wouldn’t happen anyway.

The only practical difference between a naturalistic pantheist and an atheist, therefore, is that an atheist doesn’t bother to call the universe a god. It’s just a universe.

– SmartLX