The Uncomfortable Truth

When I was a young boy I had a horrible and haunting experience. It was a few days after my seventh birthday, and I was awoken by the sound of my Grandad calling my Nan from the bottom of the stairs. I ran to see what I could do. 

He was stood there with blood all down his lips, neck and chest. To my innocent eyes it looked like a very bad nosebleed. I ran to tell my Nan about the nosebleed, and it was this fact which she took at face value. Grandad was having a nosebleed. The tissues were in the kitchen. I should go off to tell him. She would follow on in a bit. No big deal.

A few minutes later I was kneeling on the blood-soaked floor of the kitchen, cradling my beloved Grandad, as he died. His eyes were begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do but hold him.

I finally came to terms with this in my late thirties.

When I was 19, I met with a psychologist who explained how my tendency to run the incident through in my mind could have been shut off by grief therapy, had it existed when I was seven. Later still, another counsellor asked me to honestly ask myself what a seven-year-old me could have done... really? The honest answer was nothing, but that fact took a while to sink in.

You see, the problem is that as I got older, and studied more about first aid, First Response & pre-hospital emergency care, in these increasing levels of complexity, I saw that incident from a more and more informed perspective. I lost sight of the fact that I was only a seven year old kid, with none of the knowledge I gained as I grew up.

This 'Grandad's Death Apologism' ultimately led me to have some serious delusions about how his demise was my fault, because I didn't perform some, now, routine actions which may have saved him. Such as recognizing that it wasn't an epistaxis for starters!

An astute reader will already know where this story is headed. This is a blog about religions and their follies after all. So, where do we usually find events recorded by ill-informed, scientifically ignorant authors whose stories are later retold from more modern and complex perspectives as more information becomes available?

Yes... The Holy Bible.

The job of the Christian Apologist is to deny the actual words of the authors, the stories within the text as seen through primitive eyes, and make up new ideas to explain what they meant, and why the stories actually meant something other than what they say.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a text by Aaronid "Priestly" scribes of the 6-5th centuries BCE, writing around the time of or just after the Jewish exile in Babylon, whose Yahweh speaks everything into being from some pre-existing materials, such as space, water and soil. Meanwhile, Gen 2:4b-Gen 3:24 is a text two hundred years older, written by Elohists who were following their tradition of Yahweh moulding humans, animals and plants out of the earth, clearly more from an agricultural perspective.

These texts actually have messages all of their own, but modern Creationists cannot bear to accept that these are from two traditions, which if taken at face value, clearly demonstrate that Yahweh is a human literary construction, used as 'Priestly Propaganda'! Instead, they have to find a way to construct a narrative that explains how the second, older story is a clarification of a period within the first, younger story, and tells us that they are both, in fact, telling a single story.

They are rewriting the story from a point of view of having both an agenda and a new set of data. Just as I did with my Grandad's death.

When you fail to take a story, or an account of an event, at face value, and forget the knowledge level of its author(s), or participants, you diminish your ability to objectively analyse the truth of it. If you're not 100% honest in your dealing with Bible texts, you relinquish any claim you have of understanding some 'arcane knowledge' or 'hidden truths' held within the text.

I didn't know about pulmonary pathologies, traumatic cardiac events, haemostatic techniques, CPR, or Stroke management when I was seven. I had to be honest about that before I could recognize the truth of my Grandad's death. If you're honest about the Creation myths of the Bible, you must accept that they inadvertently undermine the veracity of your god claim... in short, they explain the circumstances in which you can be certain your god isn't real... and never was. 

This is the uncomfortable truth!

When Atheists Have FAITH In Science

"You would have to be remarkably resistant to brainwashing to resist the claim - endlessly repeated - that we are our brains. The notion that our consciousness, the self to which successive moments of consciousness are attributed, our personality, our character, personhood itself, are identical with activity in our brains is so widely received that it seems downright eccentric to profess otherwise." - Raymond Tallis "Aping Mankind"

Until this last weekend I have never understood why theists say that "atheists have faith in science", or that "science is our religion."

I do now.

For some, those analogies are anathemas. "How could that be true?", they cry. "Science is a process," they argue. "It's a collection of models which best fit the observations we make of the world around us. It is driven by research and evidence. We don't need faith to believe it. The evidence is there!"

The problem comes when atheists start to defend science like it can never be wrong. They really do start to sound like Christians defending the Bible, or Muslims defending the Qur'an. Science for these people isn't the nebulous constantly shifting and improving body of "best models we have at the moment" we all know it is, for them it's rigid, and certain. No more so than the people who have come to believe the all-pervasive, yet pseudo-scientific belief that "we are our brains" and therefore we do not have conscious free will.

I can already hear many of you shifting in your seats and a few gasps of air have been gasped in an incredulous manner as that last bit sank in. Yes, I did say that the evolutionary psychologist position that we are our brains is nonsense. It is a scientifically religious concept, or Scientism if you like.

If you want to believe that we humans are only a by-product of trillions of sodium-potassium exchanges in the neuronal matter of our brains then fine, stop reading now and go grab a coffee, or have a lie down. For those of you who aren't fooled by this homeopathic account of consciousness and actually want to understand where I'm coming from, strap in.

When I suggested this idea to an atheist on Twitter recently I was immediately branded a "closet-Creationist", accused of being insane, Called "Mr Black and White" (whatever that means), and because I have a disability which affects my memory (I'm not kidding) I was called a liar. Apparently he's all for us being our brains until faced with the evidence that one key component of fibromyalgia (which I suffer from) is memory-loss, which according to him I don't suffer from, instead I'm just choosing to lie to him. If we are our brains, as suggested, I cannot lie to him. I cannot reasonably be held responsible for any action I take because, according to him, I am the victim of an evolutionary drive to do whatever it is I'm currently doing. So, even if I was I would not be lying to him, my brain would be. I'm absolved of all guilt. So the statement "there are no murderers, only victims of brain activity" is also a valid according to this neuromaniac. It rather makes you wonder doesn't it? But, this does illustrate one underlying principle of Neuromania, similar to a condition we see in theists all the time, which we call "cherry-picking of facts!"

What do we get when we point out that God wasn't a nice guy in the Bible?
Lots of Bible passages cherry-picked to show he was (or that Jesus was) and personal insults.

What do we get when we point out contradictions in the text of the Bible?Lots of apologetics, and links to websites and blogs and videos teaching us ignoramuses why these contradictions aren't contradictions. And personal insults.

What do we get when we claim Jesus was likely a mythical god and not a real person?Lots of Bible passages claiming to describe him as real, links to the Gospels, more videos, articles written by believers and so on. Oh... and personal insults.

Guess what I got when I told this fellow that neuromania was a thing and we are not just our brains?

You guessed it... Cherry-picked studies, links to books and videos which supported his views, and the aforementioned incredulity and ad hominem attacks... exactly what we've all come to expect from theists.

People who think science is awesome (myself included) must also realize that science isn't definitive. There are many faults with it. Almost every study suffers from a degree of bias. Most scientists go to great length to iron out these biases, or at least own up when their sample-size isn't as big as they'd like, or when people dropped out of the study, or when something didn't otherwise go to plan, or even when they weren't meticulous enough, but there are people who perform studies with such tunnel-vision that they publish without noticing even the basic flaw in their methodology, or results. Their premise is incorrect to start with, or their conclusions are all wrong at the end.

One of the key "we are our brains" (WAOB) studies is Libet's experiments which showed that our brains "light up" on an EEG moments before we are aware of the desire to move a hand. This suggests that the brain activates our hand movement before we are even aware that we have actually made the decision to move it. This study was flawed for a number of reasons but it completely forgot that it is entirely possible that the area of the brain controlling the hand movements lit up because it had been told to, by the mind of the subject being studied. A conscious decision activating the brain which fed-back a confirmation code, which the participants mistook as the decision itself, which then led to the hand being raised.

Think about that. There are a few scenarios worth considering:

One :
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the need to move our hands.
We move our hands.

Two:
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the desire to move our hands.
We decide to move our hands.

Three:
Our minds tell our brains to activate our hands.
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the decision to move our hands.
We move our hands.

In all three cases the EEG lights up moments before an awareness is felt and then the hand is moved. Exactly what Libet saw.

If your argument is that we move our hand exclusively because the brain tells us to and we have no conscious control over that action, you're ignoring the possibility that the brain is being told what to do by something outside itself and the decision was in fact entirely our own; and that deciding to do something involves the subconscious as much as the conscious parts of our minds, and the non-physical as much as physical parts of our brains. It's a bit like arguing that workers on the factory floor make the shoes their boss tells them to make, whilst forgetting that the factory output is controlled by market forces. If you only have a method for assessing the actions of the factory boss, you're missing half the picture aren't you? In the above second case the brain tells our hand to move and we decide to do it, so there is an active participatory control mechanism in place between the brain and the hand. In the third instance the brain is being controlled from somewhere else which cannot be examined.

You can only test for things you can test. Aren't we telling theists that all the time? We admit openly that we could be wrong. There might be a god. However, given that we cannot test for one it can be assumed that there isn't one. And yet, the WAOB crowd refuse to accept that, since we cannot test for the mind, we could be wrong about there not being one!

If we are our brains and we have no conscious control over anything we do, we cannot be any more in control when we are awake than we are when we are asleep. We cannot be any more in control when we perform neurosurgery to cure a person of epilepsy than we are when having an epileptic fit of our own. This makes no sense at all.

I hope you can all understand how ridiculous that notion is though, because our legal systems can. After all, I wonder how many WAOB fanatics would be willing to stand up in a Court of Law to defend a paedophile accused of rape and murder, by stating for the record that he is under the complete control of his brain, carrying out only evolutionarily dictated actions (or actions determined by damage to otherwise normal areas of the brain) and therefore cannot be held responsible, so should be allowed to go free without any punishment?

Any takers?

Let's be honest here for once, shall we? The WAOB concept is all fine in principle, but not a single one of us truly believes it when taken to its extremes, any more than we think a theist would truly believe in a god when we take her beliefs to their extremes. We know what we think of ourselves, we can direct other people to become aware of our emotions, of other things in our spacial environment, or talk in the abstract about so far incomplete ideas. We can experience guilt, which we may or may not chose to use to change future actions. We can fight our supposedly evolutionary preference for 0.7 hip-to-waist ratioed women, or women from our own class, caste or "race", to settle down with a rotund, or skinny lady from the opposite side of the colour spectrum to our own, just because she has a similar sense of humour, or likes the music of Schubert and knows how to make a great omelette! Yes, I do know that all of these things can be explained, it is claimed, by evolutionary psychology, but it really is just the scientific equivalent of theistic apologetics isn't it?

When we look for someone who is similar to us they say it's because of our evolutionary compulsion for tribalism. Yet, When we look for someone opposite to us they say it's because of our evolutionary drive to widen the genepool. I call this having a bell for every tooth. We can find "research" to support every position under the Sun, so why bother with any of it?

The bottom line is that I think, rather than the declaration "We are our brains!", the very best we can do, if we want to remain honest and, most of all, consistent, is make the claim that "We could be our brains!" And, if you decide that makes me a closet-Creationist, insane, or whatever else.

There's apparently nothing either one of us can do about that.



For an in-depth study as to why Neuromania is wrong, see Prof. Raymond Tallis' excellent book "Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity." This blog represents an incredibly simplistic view of the arguments against scientism. If you only go by what I've said, I really feel for you. You need to look for better evidence than what I've said. You, more than anyone, need to read Prof. Tallis' book. :)


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My 5 Top Tips for Atheists

Hi... it's been a while.

It has been suggested that I write a post about how to deal with being new to the wonderfully liberating world that is atheism.

I have been an atheist for 30 years. It started when I was bored one summer in 1985 and decided to read the family Bible. It was a big, old, leather bound thing with a family tree in the front of it and lots of illuminations (Bible-speak for drawings.) So, once a day I settled down in the spare room to read the book, from cover to cover. About half way through reading Genesis I became an atheist. To this day I fail to see how anyone with any sense can make it through the first two chapters of Genesis and not immediately realize that the book is fiction. I finished the Old Testament (OT) and gave up, only to go back to it a few years later when we started doing work on the New Testament (NT) in school. Trust me when I tell you that the content of the book bares little or no resemblance to what teachers and preachers tell you it says. No wonder the Christian community spends so much time and energy (and money) on apologetics... but more on that later.

Paganism crept in shortly after this, but it was always of the atheist variety, that being a belief that the "gods and goddesses" of the religion are nothing more than archetypes (see Jung) for the ways in which we express ourselves and look forward to new challenges. A less wank-tastic version of the "think like a lion become a lion" crap they try to make you do at 'self-improvement' seminars.

Anyway, since I am not new to this game I will let you new atheists (not to be confused with "New Atheists"*) into a few secrets on how to handle your new life.

Many of you reading this will not be in the liberal and accepting position I was in. My father is an ignostic aptheist, which is someone who literally does not see the point of gods and therefore doesn't give a hoot about them. My mother, was and still is a Christian, although she has not seen the inside of a regular church for as long as I can remember, except for weddings, baptisms and funerals. So, my dad puts up with my talking about atheism and theism but considers the subject to be entirely boring and my mother listens with polite amusement. I am 42 now, with kids of my own (both self-declared atheists) so what can she say, eh?

I know this might seem like a dream come true for many of you. There are those who cannot speak up for fear of harm, isolation and financial loss. I worry about you guys. It boggles my mind that a religion (and they all do this) which talks about caring and accepting everyone, puts so many caveats in place to prevent people from leaving. There are a number of reasons why, but the biggest one has to be what social psychologist Irving Janis affectionately call "groupthink".

"Groupthink occurs when a group values harmony and coherance over accurate analysis and critical evaluation. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly follow the word of the leader and it strongly discourages any disagreement with the concensus." - Psychology Today

For this reason I am not here to tell you how, or when, to 'come out' as a non-believer. That is for you to decide, based on your circumstances and perception of the results that might follow from such an action. My advice is to hold fast and remember that atheism is growing quickly and social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook are providing some great resources and bringing people together. You are NOT alone. Atheism is becoming more normal, and the proof of this can be seen in the recent escalation in religious people and groups becoming more vocal about their faith, and declarations of whole countries which are seeing a decline in religiosity being "Christian countries" by various politicians.

All I can tell you is that (on the whole) the atheist community are very supportive of recently deconverted atheists and the level of tolerance found here is infinitely higher than in any religion.

In with being asked to write this was a tacit request for advice on how to deal with internet theists who flood the cables with apologetics and nonsense. So here are my top 5 tips for dealing with theists online and in real life:

1. Remember that YOU do NOT have to prove anything. 

The theist is the one making the positive claim that a god exists, and therefore the onus (no matter what they tell you) is on them to prove it. Apart from saying "I don't believe your claims." you really do not have to say much else. You can be as dismissive as you like. Often I like to treat them like some drunk who tells you that they are a secret agent, or an alien. A "Really? That's interesting, but oh... look at the time... gotta run!" is all you need to say. You can block the ones who just will not quit talking at you. "So what?" is a powerful phrase.

"Atheism isn't true" - "So what?"
"So GOD is!" - "So what?"
"So YOU have to listen?" - "OK, why?"
"If you don't YOU WILL BURN IN HELLFIRE!" - "Yeah? So what?"
"You're LOST and need to be FOUND again! Find SALVATION in the arms of JEEEEEEEEEEZZZUUUUUSSS!!!" - "Yeah? OK. Whatever. See ya round mate."

The more people of this ilk start to realise that we don't care what they think and/or say, the more agitated they get, but eventually one or two do start to wonder why we don't care and look for answers. If they do so with an objective mind they usually deconvert. Trying to get a theist to be objective can be difficult. Though, that's perhaps how you got here. Hi... welcome to sanity.

2. Learn how to ask the right questions.

Let's say you have decided to engage with the theist and argue your point with them. My advice to you is to learn about Socratic Questioning, either from Dr Peter Boghossian's book "A Manual For Creating Atheists", or the excellent YouTube video series on Street Epistemology by Anthony Magnabosco. This line of thinking is extremely effective at dealing with theists.

The hardcore "hell and brimstone" types hate Socratic questioning because no matter how hard they try you just keep requesting more detailed information. This "lunatic fringe" cannot understand why you are deflecting their nonsense back at them, and even the "scholars" eventually start to hate it when their knowledge runs out and they are either forced to ignore you, go around in circles or get angry. In each cases you have won the debate. You'll get used to a lot of toys being thrown from a lot of prams on this journey.

3. Be patient. 

Many of the people you come across are victims of their own religion's brainwashing scheme. Think back to when you believed the nonsense. You may still harbour fears about losing your soul, burning in a fiery lake, or being tortured forever. Religious bullshit can be very hard to wash off.
Ask yourself how would you want to be spoken to? You have an advantage in that you have been there too and so you know how it feels to believe those things, and be in their situation. I know that for some people enlightenment came when someone ridiculed them and they got pissed enough to go looking for counter-arguments and found only common sense staring at them (like Jerry DeWitt and Matt Dillahunty) but for many telling them they're stupid only makes them more likely to entrench themselves in their beliefs.

4. Follow your own path. 

Are you interested in evolution and science? If so, then read, read, read! Lots of great books by many great authors are out there waiting for you to pick them up and read, or listen to in the car on the way to work. For some good recommendations follow people like David Smalley, or Aron Ra, or ask me. If you are not interested in evolution, or science you don't have to be. Only theists equate atheism with an interest in science and technology. You might prefer art, literature, music or any number of other things.

When you find a theist who argues that atheism is not true because evolution is false just ignore them. For one, they are using a form of logical fallacy and for another, who cares? You don't, right? Evolution isn't your thing, so just don't worry about it. Your non-belief is probably founded on your realization that the evidence for a god just doesn't stack up. It has nothing to do with science. Even if evolutionary scientists have it all wrong, the claims of the theist are no more likely to be true. In this vein I often ask that very question: "If evolutionary scientist are mistaken, how does that affect the claims made by theists about creation?" You'd be surprised how often that's met with silence, or a lot of words thrown together which don't make any sense to anyone but the person who said it (word-salad.)

It's not your job to argue FOR evolution, or any argument FOR your position at all. See point 1. The argument "Evolution isn't true, therefore Yahweh!" is no more valid than "Jelly isn't true, therefore Sasquatch!"

5. Look for inconsistencies.

When one theist makes a point, try to remember who it was who made that claim, or said that thing. For instance, if one of them says gays are evil, then make a mental note. Then, when someone else, says that gays are misguided, or putting on a show, you can point towards that other guy and say "I've heard *insert name of other person here* say *whatever he/she said*, why do you think you are right and not him/her?" or something to that effect. The point being that if theism were true and there WAS a god out there telling his subjects that ONE truth they all claim to be privy to, why do they all take up such different, and often opposite positions on things?

It's helpful, though not essential, that you learn what is and what isn't a logical fallacy. Matt Dillahunty's videos and episodes of the Atheist Experience and David Smalley's Dogma Debate are great resources.

If Christianity was uniform across the board its claim might have a bit more weight to it, but with around 40,000 versions (denominations) of it out there in the world we can be sure that, they can't ALL be right and they're probably all wrong. If one theist is really good at being consistent you can contrast his/her views with that of another and watch as the "he's wrong I'm right" arguments start.

These are my "top-tips", though other atheists approach debate in entirely different ways. I'm not always so kind to believers because their BS is so damn stupid the only thing I can offer them is my impatience.

I hope these ideas have been helpful. Thanks for reading. As usual, all comments are welcome.


*New Atheists is a term, usually used derogatorily against atheists who are vocal about their disdain for religion and the use of faith over good reasoning. Basically its used to describe any atheist who, when told to shut up by a preacher or imam, says "NO!"

Something You Ought To Know About

Hi,

I'm not sure it's usual for a blogger to recommend you leave his site immediately and check out someone else's blog, but that's precisely what this blogger is now doing.

A twitter friend of mine, who goes by the necessarily anonymous title of @Elishabenabuya, has a blog in which he shares his extensive knowledge of the Old Testament. His background is that of being a Talmud scholar for over 50 years, but who is now an atheist, putting to rest those oft cited myths of the Bible being a reliable source of history and the current translations being representative of the original texts.

You can find it here: apikoris.blogspot.co.il

If you are an atheist and you're not reading Elisha's blog and following him on twitter I don't really know what to do with you.

Perhaps a darkened room might help.

I jest, but you do really need to get on it.

Cheers y'all!

Why I'm No Longer Just An Atheist

Some time ago I became an atheist.

I was 12, and I'd just finished reading the family Bible (yes, we had one of those.) It was a huge, leather-bound monstrosity which sat on a corner table, set up against the stair rail on our first landing.

It took ages to read, and I have to admit to not fully understanding it at the time, but every time I came up against a passage which advocated what humans would consider an evil act I saw God at the helm.

I felt betrayed by everyone who had ever told me "God is Love". I still am.

I came to realise that the "God" of the Bible (Elohim/Yahweh take your pick) was not the god we consider to be the creator of the universe. Which meant that in that time I became a deist. A few months later I had shaken off the shackles completely and became an atheist looking for a way to express my new found love of being a human with no ties to a deity.

That is how I came to paganism. Most people think of paganism as a polytheistic religion based on a lot of woo-science, tarot card nonsense and incense burning. Yes, we burned a lot of incense, and I still like to, and I still have my tarot cards by my bed. They often fondly remind me of the actress Jane Seymour, because they are the same sort used by her in a Bond movie.

What most people don't understand is that many, many pagans know that when they invoke Pan in order to feel more free and less inhibited, they are in fact just invoking that part of themselves which can be free and uninhibited. They know it's not a prayer being received by a deity. It's self-talk. It's like knitting yourself a jumper for the cold days of winter. I was, and still am, that type of pagan. Though today I call all the gods and goddesses by their real name. Me.

In the eyes of the Christians we non-believers are all pagans and heretics.

So, why am I no longer just an atheist?

Labels matter to me. I know many people disagree, but when you see someone wearing a uniform you have a certain vision of the type of person he/she is. For good or for bad. Out of uniform their character is a little more difficult to establish. I know that when I say I'm an atheist, other atheists like me, and Christians don't (when they get to know me both groups usually agree I'm a bit of a dick!) 

:)

I have been "active" about atheism for a number of years now. But something changed recently. I see now that my simple disbelief in a deity is not getting me anywhere. 

That's why if anyone asks me what I believe now I have to be honest and tell them that religion, for me, is nothing short of POISON! I'm not an atheist anymore, I'm now a confirmed Antitheist and my new drive is that feeling of utter contempt for those religions, and their followers, which try to impose their on everyone else!

I look to that contempt to push me forward, and my compassion for humanity to take the bumps out of the ride.

Your common or garden theist is not my target. They might fund their religion and enable its crimes against humanity, reason and common sense, but they are victims too, of the venomous, institutionalised barbarism which threatens more now than ever to undermine good science and good philosophical and critical thinking; especially in our children.

All atheist activists have a responsibility to get pissed off at the constant encroachment of what is now a panicking, ever-decreasing minority of theists worming their way into our schools and colleges, either physically, or through legislation to save their religions from extinction.

We must stop this now.

Before it's too late.

Who is Mr. Maker?

The God posited by most Christians is one with ultimate, or infinite, power.

We see that term "maximally great" coming up from time to time.

However, if you think that a god exists and he is the creator of the universe, and everything in it, at which point do you make the leap from there to his power being greater than all other gods?

We have no idea, in god terms, how much power making this universe requires. For all we know this could all be a level one class at god school. 

"Great work Yahweh, I like what you've done with physics there. The gravity is really good, but that dark matter is... Class, look at Yah's universe for a second. Look at the way his dark matter flows through his space. That's really neat Yah... 'A+', but be careful not to over reach in your next assignment in Level Two's blended reality project."

How does anyone know that this god is maximally great? It's like bees thinking I'm some fantastic ethereal creature just because the hive I made for them was of perfect quality, by their standards.. The only difference being that occasionally a bee-keeper is going to pop along and make (at least) his existence known.

This brings me back to a point I made in an earlier post. Let's say God did make this universe, does it follow that He is in charge of it still? How can we be sure that the god in charge now is the same one who created it all? Did you make the car you drive?

All we have to go on is a rather simplistic view posited by ancient people's who were keen to move away from a polytheistic concept into a more monotheistic view which affords far better control of the flow of ideas and, ultimately, distribution of power.

Of course it could also be true, that the Elohim (plural) created the universe and everything in it for the LORD (God) who has since assumed control over a prefab universe. Elohim is a plural (essentially the distilled essence of all the gods) so why isn't it so that a group of gods made everything? This could account for Yahweh's inability to change anything dramatically, or intervene to stop tornadoes from tearing up houses in the US Bible-Belt! He just doesn't have that sort of juice!

Any of these scenarios could be true, so why is it that the standard Christian idea, that God rules the universe He created, so pervasive?

The church wants it to be this way and their "sheep" just lap it all up.

That's the only reason I can think of. 

Onus Probandi

I've been off for a while. My apologies, but my health fluctuates so sometimes I'm unable to focus clearly enough to write extensively.

Back with it now though.

While I've been away I've noticed that many theists on twitter, and in TV debates are still using the old fallacy of trying to turn the debate around and putting the onus probandi, or burden of proof, back onto the person denying the claim that they are making. This argument from ignorance is truly annoying.

Theists think that they get to claim whatever they like and because we cannot prove them wrong they get to claim victory.

The problem lies in their inability to extrapolate. If we cannot prove a god exists, then the god must be real, right? Well, they cannot prove that a universe-creating troll exists, so that must be the real truth. How would we ever decide which one was responsible for creating our universe? Then there's Bertrand Russell's cosmic teapot. How do you prove him to be incorrect? Is the teapot going to collide with any future mission to Mars? Does NASA need to take it into account?

Sometimes you achieve minor successes. I recently got one theist to admit that humans make up gods, but he couldn't get his head around the idea that the one he follows might likewise be a human invention. How frustrating! The cognitive dissonance required to apply rules to other ideas, but not your own, is beyond me.

Theists also tend to demand greater evidence for the negation of their claim than the claim they are themselves making. If I told you that I could fly without mechanical assistance you wouldn't be expected to prove me wrong, and likewise it wouldn't be incumbent upon you to prove that humans could not fly under any circumstances. I would not expect you to provide anatomical evidence, such as examples of bone or muscle tissue, or models of the physiological makeup of humans etc. etc. The onus is on me to provide you with evidence, perhaps by actually flying!

This moving of the goalposts is irritating, but like the shifting of the burden of proof it is just aimed at shutting down the conversation. It's the debating equivalent of "I am, but what are you?"

Why should an atheist be expected to be an expert in archaeology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, biology, anatomy, evolution, geology, theology, philosophy, literary studies, Biblical studies, history, climatology, or many other theoretical and physical sciences, arts and social sciences, just to defend their rejection of a theist's ridiculous claims? Atheism is the adoption of single position on a single claim. The burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not on you or me.

Theists need (constantly) to be reminded of that.

In a recent to-ing and fro-ing in the local paper's letters section a contributor claimed that the Bible was true because he had knowledge of 40 excavations which proved the Bible to be historically accurate. Several problems arise as a result of this comment, but chief among them is the fact that even if the Bible was 100% reliable in its account of history and every single detail was absolutely true, nothing about that would be proof of a supernatural entity creating, or controlling, everything!

What on Earth makes him think it does?

If an excavation of, let's say, Tell ed-Dab'a, the home of the Canaanites* in Egypt, revealed intricate details of their religion, supporting every word of the Bible in remarkable detail, why should that prove Yaweh is real? After all, an investigation into Roman ruins does not in any way prove that Julius Caesar was a divine being. No examination of Japanese texts or temples proves that the Emperor is godly! Why do these people make that leap from A to WTF?

I think you can probably sense that I'm somewhat frustrated by these situations. I perhaps need to take a lie down and do an Apache-language crossword puzzle or a 10,000 piece jigsaw, perhaps even nail a jelly to the ceiling. Something less difficult than trying to argue with theists about their own responsibilities in the "god-debate"!

Remember:

onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

The burden of proof lies on the claimant, not the person denying the claim.

*Excavations revealed that the language of the inhabitants of Tell ed-Dab'a was Semitic, therefore they would have to have been Canaanite. Further evidence of the nature of their religious ideas and burial methods cemented the fact. The idea of a sudden Hyksos invasion, previously accepted by many historians as the true history, but now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration, was attributed to Manethos, an Egyptian historian who must have thought that a sudden attack on Egypt sounded sexier than the centuries of slow migration by Canaanites which actually is known to have happened.

The Impossible God

Many people I speak to just won't accept that a god who is both omnipotent and omniscient cannot exist.

So, I thought I'd lay out one simple 'proof' for you all.

An all-knowing god would know every emotion felt by humans. An all-powerful god would not know what it is like to be weak, he couldn't know regret, fear, worry, or grief.

An omnipotent god could not have true knowledge of any emotion such as self-doubt, self-criticism, or feel suicidal.

An omnipotent god could not feel pain either, since nothing could hurt him. Likewise, how could anything we do hurt him, or his feelings? Falling prey to that pain we feel when someone we love deeply does something we just know they're going to do just isn't possible for an all-powerful being. There's no way to experience pain and anguish without there being a physical component.

Also, a god who feels regret could not be said to be all-knowing, simply because knowing everything would yield no surprises, and no future left unknown. Even his own actions would already be laid out. He would be as a robot carrying out his own predestined actions. Any attempt to change path would already be built in to his knowledge of that path.

It really is that simple. If a god is omnipotent it could not be all-knowing, and if he's all-knowing he could not be all-powerful.

"Jesus Was A Real Person"

... well... sort of.

Clearly the foundation of Christian thought is that Jesus was real and he brought in some new covenant or another, which made, for the first time, the meek more important than the rich and powerful... whilst telling everyone to hate their families and give away all their wealth.

They're the basics of what I've gleaned from the Christians and their New Testament. If I'm misrepresenting it it's probably on purpose.

The thing is though that Jesus was by no means the most caring and kind person in history, and on top of that he wasn't the most real... but there was someone who was.

His name wasn't even Jesus, it was Urukagina of Lagash, and he was around in the 24th Century BCE, not the 1st Century CE.

He was a Mesopotamian, who ruled under the divine authority of Ningursu (Ningirsu) , the god of Lagash, it could be argued that he was Ningursu's son, in the same way that the Emperor of Japan is regarded as a divine being. So we have yet another challenger to the moniker 'Son of God'.

Urukagina founded the earliest known formal Code of Laws, setting into law the sorts of things that Christians like to claim Jesus supported:-

Urukagina made certain that the meek inherited the Earth... or at least, he made sure that rich folk couldn't force them from their own land, or force them to sell it. Nor could the rich force the poor to sell any of their belongings, livestock or grain against their will. Also, when the rich did buy from the poor they could only do so if they paid in silver (cold hard cash), and not offer favours, future services, or any other form of promissory payments.

Urukagina also made widows and orphans exempt from taxes and cast the money-lenders from the temples... or, rather he protected the poor from exploitation by the priesthood, by ensuring that they did not have to pay any funeral costs... including the costs of any ritual offerings. The king also made certain that families who were enslaved by the rich through debt would be freed from this sort of bondage.

Urukagina also made laws banning corrupt practices by court and palace officials and he placed heavy limits on the use of capital punishment, favouring fines and incarceration over death penalties which he regarded as being ill-favoured by his god.

Altogether Urukagina was a kind and caring king whose actions set the tone for the more modern Jesus character, some 2300 years before Jesus was created; around the time that Moses was supposed to have been given the Ten Commandments by Yahweh... which he then dropped and broke so Yahweh was forced to create an entirely new set of stone tablets with noticeably different commandments on them.

It is therefore well known that these sorts of sweeping reforms were already possible, so the sorts of things Jesus did was in no way unique, or particularly special.

King Urukagina of Lagash... a.k.a. The Real Jesus, c.2360BCE

The Evolutionary Road to the Present and Beyond

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST. 

READ IT IN BITS, OR GET A COFFEE AND DIG IN!

I am frequently amused, and often appalled, at the Creationists who come on twitter claiming that "evolutionists" are living in a fantasy world if they believe we evolved from a common ancestor to monkeys. Let that sink in for a minute... Creationists, who believe that a magic sky-daddy poofed the universe and the Earth into existence at the same time and created every living thing on the Earth, including us, his special creation, believe that we live in a fantasy world.

Amazing!

We get everything from the classic line born out of sheer ignorance of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, or TOE for short: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Oh for flip's sake... really? Almost all bisections of the animal tree occur because of some sort of physical separation. So in our case the most likely scenario is that a large number of the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees got separated from the others in their group... we can speculate how to our heart's content... and their evolution, due to the change in their environment, possibly a once arboreal species now found itself on flat lands instead, came as a result of needing to adapt to the new conditions, or die.

This evolution took millions of years... as did the evolution of the rest of the species on the other side of the divide.

That ancestor is now extinct through necessity. A species cannot evolve en masse and keep the exact traits of its former self. That's just basic evolution 101.

 The other one they now seem to be focusing on is: "There is proof of microevolution and that fits in with our 'theory' of species being able to adapt, but no macroevolution has ever been observed so that cannot be true!"

These, and I'm struggling to not call them imbeciles, cannot [or will not] get their head around the fact that in science the terms macroevolution and microevolution simply have no weight at all. No true scientists use those words. Creationists should know this, because they send enough people on scholarships to proper university biology courses so that they can proclaim that an increasing number of evolutionary biologists [aka their plants] support Creationism. On those courses they are told that these terms are invalid.

On that last point they are correct, though as someone pointed out Pluto takes over 200 years to do one orbit of the Sun, but how can we prove that it does given that we live for a maximum of 120 years?

We extrapolate data from what we see in the laboratory, and these days we use DNA evidence to support the theory. We don't even need the 250,000 fossils we have to prove anything. The DNA supports our theory perfectly.

I often wonder how these people think, but then I read the webpages they point me to and realize that for the most part they don't think. They parrot off the stuff they hear at church, which is in turn parroting stuff that people like Ken Ham dream up between snorts of cocaine and threesomes with hookers in desert road motels. Perhaps I'm being too harsh there, but you know these people aren't straight arrows, and most of them aren't even happy about not being straight.

Think of a a hundred miles... what is a single mile made of? Yards and inches. And each inch is made up of sixteenths. So, we know that a sixteenth exists because we can see it. We know the inch exists, because we can see that too. But, imagine that the hundred miles ahead of us is over bumpy ground, so we lose sight of it every so often. Got it?

If you're happier you can use metric.

OK. So we can look down that road for maybe four hundred yards, then the road dips. We can see the equivalent of say, 2300 years of our history before the road dips for a while and pops up at about the 3500 year mark. This happens over and over along this road.

As an example. We get to see snippets of our past laid out on each of the sixteenths of the inches which make up this road. "Macroevolution" is the same as "microevolution" in the same way that this fictional road is the same as the sixteenths of inches which make it up. As each bit of the road comes into view we get a view of our past and we get to examine that to work out what could possibly have happened in the dips. In the past we had to dig up bits of that history and examine the finds. Such as dinosaurs and human settlements and geological samples. We would search caves, deserts, meadows and mountains trying to find examples of things lost to the earth over vast swathes of time. On that point, just as an aside, we do know how long it takes for earth to cover stuff, so we can roughly date a find according to how far down we had to dig for it.

I know I'm labouring that point a little but you know that not everyone gets this stuff the first time around.

It takes a great deal of skill to work out what we're seeing when we find a dinosaur fossil, or part thereof. It's not guesswork as some of the Creationists will tell you. It's careful examination, recreation and experimentation. As technology has improved we can now use computer data to recreate these creatures, based on careful anatomical examination. We use microscopes to determine all sorts of features unseen to our unaided eyes. Not one single scientist working today gets away with just guessing stuff.

Even Professor Richard Dawkins has to present his work to other scientists for them to hack it to bits when it deserves to be. Yet Creationists laugh at Dawkins for his proposition that there was once a collection of land masses known as Pangaea, and that through a process of separation and drifting the continents moved away from one another to where they are today.

I am really not sure how Creationists can justify their position on this idea of Pangaea, because we know that the continents are still moving today and we measure the distances between them occasionally to make doubly sure. If we work backwards from the now and use the rate and direction of the continents' drift to calculate the position of each in the distant past we get Pangaea. It's really that simple.

Also, another side note, doesn't the Bible refer to land being a single mass which was separated by rivers and oceans? Isn't that a vague reference to Pangaea?

So we're looking at this road and seeing bits of it, trying to work out how everything happened in the dips from the stuff we can see. When we don't know exactly we say things like "this may have happened", or "could" or "perhaps this", and this uncertainty, which is entirely valid and honest in the context of science, seems to set the Creationists on fire. They are satisfied that they have the answer and are arrogantly positive about it: "The evidence is in the book!" they say, demanding that we accept that the Bible is evidence rather than the claim which we all know is the case.

Look, I don't care if the Bible is a million years old, I don't care if it was written by gold-plated angelic goat herders using giant, jet-black heron feather quills and unicorn blood, on the skins of sacrificial eunuchs, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible which can be taken as prima facie evidence for anything. Nothing. The Bible is, and always will be, a claim that the stuff in it happened. Most of it is not supported by evidence of any sort.

Sorry to have to tell you Creationists, but despite what you've been told there are NO corroborative contemporary accounts of anything Jesus is said to have said, or done, and the fact remains that the Bible is now and forever a work of fiction.

That's not blasphemy... that's just a fact.

I'm not even sure that Creationists really understand some of the implications of some of the texts, but I'll deal with that another time. The purpose of this post is just to raise an analogy which explains why scientists have to use uncertain terms to describe past events and evolutionary processes.

Despite our uncertainty over many dips in the road to our past, we do now have a helping hand. We have a traveler which has been to mostly every part of that road and has now finally reached us. I'm not talking about the crocodile, which seems to have been around for a gazillion years. I'm talking about deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA].

DNA has been with organisms for a very long time. It has been handed the baton from RNA and run with it all the way through history. A really interesting part about DNA is that some of its constituent parts may have formed in Red Giant stars. This means that when Creationists are poking us for evidence of abiogenesis on Earth, they're ignoring the idea that we might well have come from outer space! Hee hee!

Building blocks of DNA (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) may have been formed extraterrestrially in outer space. Complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil,cytosine and thymine, have also been formed in the laboratory under conditions mimicking those found in outer space, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the most carbon-rich chemical found in the universe, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds. - Wikipedia [DNA]

Now that we've unlocked the secrets of our own genome we can read the DNA strands with relative ease. To the point where we are now using our knowledge to modify babies DNA to make them immune to certain genetic diseases. Something God forgot to do.
In our DNA we can see markers which we see in other ape species on out side of the divide, but not in other apes from the other side. We can trace our retroviral markers and figure out what changes have been made to the genome to make us happen, and make chimps happen.

This is not guesswork, this is bona fide science using the tools now available to us. Tools which can now see the very building blocks of life in full colour. We can see inside crystals, and pick out previously invisible specks of evidence from all around the world. We now know there was never a global flood. The Noah story is just another myth, which another thing the Creationists cannot accept.
We weren't created as a separate species from the Earth and women aren't the product of a man's rib. For starters there's no way you'll get a an XY being by taking parts of an XX being. Perhaps the other way around could be argued, but not that. Also, why would God create a woman if his goal was to have Adam and his "companion" look after the Garden of Eden? Surely another man would have done just as well, if not better. Men have similar strength profiles, unless you're going to include bodybuilders, or the Basques. Two men could have happily kept that garden in tip top shape forever. A woman was in fact an unnecessary addition.

The whole Creation thing is a load of hooey. For starters there's two versions of it, which Creationists seem to purposely ignore, or claim that the two opposing timelines are versions of the same event. I'd not want one of them defending me in a court that's for sure, if they can't see basic facts like that.

Evolution is a progression, one sixteenth at a time, until we cover the 100s and 1000s of miles into the past. It's like when we look at a prairie rising up to become a tall hill. The upward sweep of the lowlands forces us to ask a question... where does the hill start and the prairie end? Likewise with evolution, when precisely does species A become species B and how? What were the changes and what was the final straw which prevented the two species from being able to interbreed?

Where does the hill begin? Where do humans fit in on the future of the evolutionary tree? What will we become? Will we create a technological supreme being as has been predicted? Will we eventually be ruled over by this TechnoGod? Will the science of the future create what the Creationists have been telling us is already real?

Who knows? We don't... but one thing is for certain, Creationists really have no idea at all.

"The Bible is True"... but which version?

As a part-time hobby I like to discuss ideas with the Jehovah's Witnesses [J-Dubs] which blight the streets of my home town every week. I only do it every now and then because some of them have banned me from visiting their stall after being unable to properly answer my questions. I'll explain why this week I even got one of them to ask me "What's the purpose of your coming here today telling us this? What difference does it make to you what our beliefs are?" Let the fact that this comment came from a Jehovah's Witness, famed for going door-to-door peddling their crap, who at the time was sitting behind a desk in a pagoda full of Witness literature and with signs outside proclaiming God to be this and that wonderful thing, sink in for a moment... yes.. indeed!

The reason I annoyed them this week was because I approached them with the topic of "Versions of the Bible"; my pitch being that for every line in the Bible which can be interpreted two or more ways there forms a pathway which leads to a new version of the doctrine. It's not as sketchy as it sounds.

For instance, if you believe that the account of The Creation [A] is true, as they do, then that's one version. If you don't then that's another. If you then consider the comment made by God prior to the Flood in which mankind is limited to 120 years [B] and think that this is a countdown to destruction, as the J-Dubs do, then that's another factor to consider, as is the idea that the 120 years is a literal age-limit set on each of us.

Putting them together we get four different versions of the story:

God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and gave Mankind 120 years to shape up = AaBa
God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and limited Mankind to lifespans of 120 years = AaBb
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did give Mankind 120 years to shape up = AbBa
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did limit Mankind to 120 year lifespans = AbBb

So we have the four versions... Of course there are other versions of each of these but I'm trying to keep this simple for now.

Out of two lines of text we can derive FOUR different versions of the Bible. I told this to the male J-Dub but got the standard "They're not versions, they are just different opinions." Well, I'd love to know what a version is if not a different opinion on the text. Clearly whether one has the opinion that God did create the Earth etc. in six days, or not, informs your practice of your faith. It informs your reading of other texts too. So how you interpret that one line does make a big difference.

As it is with other lines, and events.

Take for instance the event in the Bible when God supposedly appeared to Moses on a hill top [C]. The story says he appeared to Moses in a pillar of smoke. Now then, some interpret that as Moses having an actual visit from God manifesting as a pillar of smoke [a]. Others say that the fire and smoke was to cover God's face from Moses and so God appeared more as a man than the smoke itself [b]. Does this not fundamentally change your view on what your God is, or can be?

I personally think it was a charlatan's trick and Moses was making the whole thing up, making use of rudimentary pyrotechnic skills he'd learnt from other charlatans descended from Abraham. who you'll remember pulled a similar trick earlier on. However, we're talking about other people's interpretations here so mine do not matter.

So... should we add this event to the narrative? With the Creation [A], the 120 years comment [B] and the new Moses smoke trick [C] what combinations are now available?

AaBaCa
AaBaCb
AaBbCa
AaBbCb
AbBaCa
AbBaCb
AbBbCa
AbBbCb

That's eight versions from three events, using only two possible versions of each story.

The Bible is beginning to look like those old Steve Jackson books I used to read as a kid, where I got to pick my own story through the book. only this time instead of only my character dying the Bible wipes out over 2 million!

How about we add the parable of the "Water into Wine" [D]? Either Jesus really did make wine out of water [a], or it is a narrative explanation of the Jewish rite of passage [b].

I won't bore you with the details but that makes 16 possible versions.

Then what if we add the Raising of Lazarus [E], the 100 Zombie Saints [F] and on and on back and forth throughout the texts of the Old and New Testaments... how many versions of one book can there be, each with a unique narrative through the text?

At no point have I touched on how many printed versions there are, but if you even take one fundamental narrative, that of the idea that sin leads to an eternity in Hell, and you realize that the original Old Testament didn't feature Hell at all, and that even some versions of the New Testament lack that idea, you now see how utterly incompatible these books are from one simple change in dynamic.

So when I ask you which version of the Bible you trust to be the whole truth I'm not talking about the KJV, or the NIV or the YLT or KJV2000, I'm talking about all these little ideas and events and how you the reader, the believer, chose to form your ideas about what you believe. If as a conservative estimate we suggest that there are 100 lines in the Bible which can be taken two ways each, the total number of possible pathways through the Bible is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.

Of course this is a rather facetious way of looking at it, but I think that if Christians are going to go down the line of saying that "The Bible is true" as so many insist on doing, I think we do get to ask "which version"... because I do not see that it is such a stupid question after all.

Let's say God created everything...

How many times have you heard Christians claim that their god, Yahweh, created everything?

Well, for the sake of argument, let's say their god did create the universe. How many alternatives can you think of to the standard scriptural model of a god who is still present and looking after it?

I can think of quite a few, and I'd challenge any theist to find evidence to disprove me (since they insist we disprove their ideas.)

1. God created the universe and everything in it... but died in the process.
2. God created the universe etc... but moved on to design and build another one, leaving this one to fend for itself.
3. God created etc...  but gave it to his younger brother to look after.
4. God etc... but cannot interact with it because he moved onto a different plane of existence.
5. God etc... but it was considered a failed experiment and is currently in a room somewhere awaiting destruction.
6. God etc... but was part of a research and development team working for a corporation which is using it to power their offices.
7. God etc... but the universe is a component of a much larger machine.
8. God etc... but the universe is the result of a weapon which he activated as part of a multidimensional war.
9. God etc... created it by accident... whilst cooking a Victoria Sponge in his new quantum oven. (courtesy of @CrispySea)

In all of these scenarios the same god created the same universe but is not interacting with it anymore.

Which brings us to the other claim made by Christians that we have to worship their god by way of thanks for creating us... If any of these scenarios are correct, why are they worshiping the absentee? Clearly there is nobody there to make any changes, or answer prayers, or cast anyone to a fiery hell.

The failure of the theist isn't so much believing the nonsense he got sold by his church pastors... it's not imagining the range of alternatives open to him.