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!

Stuff Happens

Let me tell you about something which just happened to me:

Yesterday I left my house, got in my car and drove away. I had no reason to do so. I had nowhere I needed to be. I just got in the car and got going; completely unconsciously, and without purpose. When I left my road I could of course have turned left or right, but my choice was automatic, and absolutley without any obvious reason. A few hundred yards further on I reach a crossroads with three possible choices. I just drove straight ahead. Again, for no reason I could fathom. At this point I was just out for a drive and no longer cared why, or where I went.

Moments later I watched John*, a man who suffers from Altzheimers', pitch backwards out of his Motability scooter onto the pavement. So, for reasons beyond my ken I found myself able to stop and help this man get back on the scooter and see him safely back home again.

Now... there are some readers who will state, without any possible evidence, that a deity saw what was about to happen, inform me of the need to get in my car and drive down that particular road and be on the spot to help this man, and that furthermore, his accident was designed to either teach him (or me) something, or prevent a further, more tragic occurrence later on.

This, they will argue is the result of "divine will", "divine interaction" or synchronicity. Being placed, for whatever mysterious purpose, at a specific location at a time where your help, guidance, or merely presence is required. Invariably the proponents of this idea point to incidents like mine, where a person with a certain set of skills (pre-hospital care in my case) is made to be on hand to use those skills... help an accident victim.

Synchronicity is the paranormal concept described by Carl Jung as "meaningful coincidences"; events which occur without any obvious causal relationship that are nonetheless meaningfully related. My sudden decision to leave the house, my decision to travel by car, my twice choosing a direction at a junction at random, and the accident occurring at a time when I could be there to witness it and help out. I did not cause myself to leave the house, nor did I choose for a sick man to leave his house, travel a quarter of a mile up the road and then accidentally pitch out of a motor scooter. However, both funnelled towards a single point in time.

Divine will is often given the credit for driving synchronicity, and it is very hard, when it happens to you, to deny that there is something else going on than mere coincidence. As an atheist I obviously don't believe in gods, or divine intervention, though events like these happen to me a lot. I have found myself at a few accident scenes where vehicle passengers require rescuing and/or treating... once I watched a man thrown from his motor-cycle on the motorway right in front of me because of a sudden mechanical malfunction, and in another case I was a few seconds behind a car which drove underneath an articulated lorry, killing the driver. I have also found myself in places where my experience of martial arts has been required to defend someone from an attack, or theft, or help a police officer who was struggling, and failing, to make an arrest.  After this event happened today I decided to attach a reason to my journey by going to the school uniform store to buy my son a new polo-shirt and arrived at the store to find that a shirt of his exact size was lying on the top of the pile. Clearly there MUST be a deity driving all this, right?

Of course... not!

With thousands of people in each town, with a multitude of talents between them, many with very similar training, experience, or skills, it is impossible to think that when an incident occurs there will be nobody there to help at all. I know many people of a variety of backgrounds who have taken first aid courses at work, or at school, or with care organizations. Roughly 60% of my close friends and associates could have been in my stead today to help this man. I just happened to be there. Though I wasn't alone. A local librarian also stopped to help, who by her own admission had no first aid skills to put into the pot, nor did she know how the scooter worked, or how to repair it. So, what purpose was served by sending her to the scene? To give her something to talk about during lunch?

People stop to help others out. I've never stopped at an incident and been the only person who did so. I've stopped to help at a few accidents where the next person who happened along was a doctor, a nurse, police officer, or paramedic. I had another incident where my own car caught fire underneath and my friend stepped out of his house to see it in time to tell me to get out, a few seconds later the car was engulfed by the fire, utterly destroying it; I had no clue what was about to happen and his fortuitous arrival on the scene probably saved my life.

On another more recent occasion I was parked at a roundabout in position to capture a minor fender-bender occur in sight of my dashcam. I have been able to send the victim a copy of the incident to help with his insurance claim. Of course this must be divine intervention, since I drive over 50,000 miles a year and my dashcam is on permanently when I'm operating the vehicle, over many hundreds of hours of driving time. If I didn't, at least once, capture an incident on film I would consider THAT to be bizarre!

Stuff happens! And it happens all the time.

It's not driven by anything. There are no guiding forces. These are just cognitive placeholders some people insert into the mess of things because it is too bizarre to believe that these incidents just randomly occur when they happen to be around to help, or to witness them.

If someone lacks the facility to explain an event, it is part of human programming to find a reason, or a rationale, and add it to the thing to help come to terms with it. There has to be a purpose for everything, otherwise we might have to face the reality that there is no purpose behind anything... especially not a divine one. Yet, that is exactly what's happening here. Stuff just rolls from event to event with no external guiding principles. For instance, there is a tale of a man who, upon surviving the Hiroshima bombing, went to stay with his friend in Nagasaki. Stuff most definitely happened to him! I know someone who was rescued from a cruise ship which sank, by a ship that also ran aground and sank with her still on board!

I bet every single one of us can reel off a number of incidents and events which have happened to them, or colleagues, or friends, which seem unusually connected, or synchronistic. 

As Jung wrote: "Acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable." and "Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity."

He's telling us that he believes an event is more likely to occur when there is no reason that we can perceive behind it, and that there is a funnelling of time and space which occurs in order to make two or more people coincide.

Or... Stuff happens, but for a reason!

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Carl Jung's work. I think his genius is obvious, and he is clearly one of the most vivid and dynamic thinkers of all time. He is the probably the other dreamer John Lennon speculated about. But, this whole idea of synchronicity is just baffling when you consider the truly magnificently gigantic number of minute instances which fill each moment of our lives. We focus heavily on each instance of coincidence whilst totally ignoring the billions of others which have zero interest to us. 

Just think of that time when you were thinking about someone and just happened to walk around a corner and bump into them. Now remember all the times you thought of someone and nothing of significance happened at all. It's harder than you think isn't it? You're programmed to recognise agency in your life. That's why god-belief is so prevalent. 

How many times have you thought: 'This thing happened because it was part of a greater plan' or 'my life is clearly being guided towards a greater purpose'? It's lovely to think like this isn't it? Yes, clearly the idea of a guiding force, or divine plan, or will, is hard to put to one side, but it has to be, because ultimately the same thinking which brings this innocuous belief of paranormal event-steering to mind is the exact same thinking which causes Islamic fundamentalists to blow themselves up in market places and schools.

You might not be able to join those dots, but it is exactly the same thing. Believing that you, the believer, the true believer, of the one true version of the religion which seeks to bring the truth to the world of the one true god, whose character and whims only your faith group is privy to, brings with it a great many bags of arrogance and elitism. Thinking that you are being guided, or led by the nose, to some glorious goal, or higher purpose, through instances of being in the right place, at the right time, to help, or advise, is ultimately dangerous. Stuff happens folks. No reason. No guiding forces. Just coincidence and happenstance.

Get used to it. 

An Open Letter

I recently received the following letter from the head of education at the British Humanist Association. It speaks for itself, but I'm more than happy to respond to it... enjoy:

  

Dear Sir

Thank you for attending our school speakers training event in Cardiff and for completing the post-course task.

I am writing to say that, with regret, we will not be accrediting you as a BHA School Speaker.

It is of vital importance to the BHA that we are completely confident that our school speakers understand that their role in schools is to raise young people's awareness and understanding of Humanism, and that they are not there to be critical of religion. This is essential to ensure we are invited back for repeat visits and therefore for the success of the programme.

On the training course, some of the things you said made us worried that you may on occasions feel a temptation to be critical of religions or religious beliefs and that this might occasionally override the need to show respect. It was felt by myself and a number of other people on the course that occasionally your tone crossed from respectful disagreement to less tolerant criticism, a tone that could prove unhelpful in the school environment and the situations our speakers often find themselves in. I hope you do not feel this is a criticism of your views; it is simply that we need to be 100% sure that all our speakers present an appropriate message in the classroom.

We have therefore decided not to accredit you.

We appreciate your commitment to Humanism and there are many other ways in which you can support us, which we hope you will investigate on our website.

If you would like to talk about this in more detail on the phone, I would be happy to speak to you.

Kind regards

Luke Donnellan

Head of Education, British Humanist Association

I'm going to point out to start with that I'm in no way bothered about not being offered accreditation. Accreditation by the BHA is not a statutory requirement for speaking about Humanism in schools. It merely adds an additional layer of credibility and authority, and ensures that there is a forum for the school to report on the conduct of the speaker, and content of the talk given to the children. During the course my enthusiasm for the project was destroyed, by another course attendee, who pointed out the near impossibility of getting SACRE* groups to agree to schools booking Humanist speakers. I wonder which is of more importance in this context... a person occasionally making comments against established religious ideas, or someone utterly undermining the entire project with tales of being blocked and blacklisted by the SACRE he actually belongs to?

I do have antitheistic views. That much is obvious to anyone who meets me, however, this letter directly attacks my professionalism and that is something I will not allow to go unchallenged. Nobody on the course knew me well enough to judge my approach to Humanism, or have any knowledge at all of my ability to address the subject under different conditions. 

The course was attended by a fairly substantial group, including the leader of the Swansea Humanists, and its Secretary, and the Director of the Wales Humanists (WH), a group which has just over 600 members... about 200 fewer people than who follow me on Twitter!

Another person in attendance, who is a teacher and member of the board of the WH and an ex-girlfriend of mine who visibly turned sour-faced when she realised who I was. I have no doubt that her hatred of me, spanning almost two decades, drove her to poison the well and speak ill of me (not putting lies out of the picture you understand); imagining that this wasn't a significant occurrence is a little naïve. 

I wonder how you get from seeing how a person behaves in a room full of his peers, and many much older, to translating that into how a person, who is a school governor and PTA treasurer, would act in a school? I have teachers in my family, and I know that talk in the staff room is often highly critical of parents and students, yet somehow that never seems to spill out past the staff room door. Why? Could it be that teachers are professional educators who can put their personal views to one side as and when required? Just like me!

Luke Donnelly is an ex-headmaster. He of all people should appreciate that educators are able to compartmentalise their private views away from the set spiel they deliver in the classroom, to remain 'on message'. I was an actor for almost 25 years. If anyone can play the part of the perfect Humanist school visitor, it's me.

Whether Luke reads this or not, I don't care. I'm busy with my new projects, like the Llanelli Humanists, which is an online group for the moment. It is intentionally independent, because we feel that the BHA and National Secular Society are just talking-shops in Wales, with very little presence. There are no billboards, bus posters, leaflets, wall posters, TV or radio adverts explaining what Humanism is, or what it means to be a part of a group. Everyone I've ever spoken to, outside of the movement, has asked me to explain what Humanism is... Oh, and in doing so, I've NEVER denigrated any other religions! I don't need to, because I'm explaining what something is, not comparing it to other beliefs. There is a difference that I recognise, because I'm not the blithering idiot Luke seems to think I am!

The loss is the BHA's not mine. Schools aren't going to be welcoming in strangers to talk about Humanism, when the SACREs just instruct them to send their RE teachers on courses which they direct and script. Not in this decade, or the next! The money invested in this project would be better spent addressing the need for educating parents about their rights to withdraw their children from Collective Worship, and raising the profile of WH. You can teach the kids all you want, but the legal power to remove children from the indoctrination process rests with the parents. It is they who urgently need to learn about Humanism. 

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!"

What Is A God?

I've decided to update this post on 21st Feb 2017. I'm doing this because of a recent exchange I had on Twitter. My interlocutor's insistence on straw-manning my very simple question of "What is a god?" to "What is God?" is decidedly dishonest. He of course gleefully answered his version of my question, and is claiming it as a valid answer. It clearly isn't is it? I mean, if you ask me what a cat is, and I describe the character of Cat from Red Dwarf to you, my answer would be of no relevance whatsoever... I simply would not be answering your question at all! For starters, no feline has ever consistently walked on two legs or spoken English!

When you ask someone to define what a god is, and they answer honestly, you often get a list of things that a god must be, or some idea of how their god exemplifies their idea of what a god is, which isn't actually an answer to the original question, but if they explain that this is all they know, I'm OK with it.

Often they reference things like being humanoid, able to create the universe, being all-good, all-knowing and all that stuff. So, let's unpick that shall we? If a god must be all these things then we should be able to pin down exactly what a god is. Surely if a god doesn't fit the bill it can't be a god, right?

So let's take a look at the common features attributed to gods:

Anthropomorphic (human-like)

There are many gods and goddesses who aren't like us, for instance Kamadhenu of Hindu culture, who whilst having the face of a human woman and often her breasts, is a cow goddess. Ninsun, the Mesapotamian mother of the famous hero-god Gilgamesh, was also a cow.

Anansi is another example of a non-arthropomorphic god. Anansi is an African spider-god, a trickster.

Huntin is an African god of trees, and himself a tree. So not all gods are humanoid.

Creative

Not all gods, or goddesses, are able to create things... especially not universes. After all, if all the creative gods did create the universe they either did so in concert, or the whole idea is total nonsense.

An example of a non-creative god is Heitsi-Eibib, an African god of evolution. Though he himself didn't create any living beings, he reputedly convinced animals to take up more suitable habitats than the ones they previously had. For instance he made the fish leave the desert for the sea, which he deemed a more appropriate place for them to live. Seems obvious when you think about it.

So no, not all gods need to be creative.

Eternal/Invulnerable

Apedemak, a Sudanese war god, came late to the Egyptian pantheon and was gone soon after. How many gods can you name? The ones you can't are probably already dead... if you believe what Terry Pratchett said about them.

Balin, an Indian hero god actually got killed in a fight with his half-brother Sugriva.

So not all gods are eternal, or it would seem invulnerable.

Ethereal/Spirit-like

Most gods and goddesses of the ancient world appeared, or could appear, physically to humans at one point or another. Yahweh's very first real appearance was walking through the Garden of Eden looking for Adam.

Khuzwane is evidenced by the marks he left during his presence on Earth, the African god who purportedly made humans from clay (where have we heard that before?) left muddy footprints everywhere he went (which are apparently still visible today) and even uses Lake Fundudzi as a private pool from time to time.

So some gods are very physical indeed.

Judgemental

There are thousands of gods and goddesses who are seemingly non-judgemental, nor are they involved in any afterlife punishments, or trials of any sort. Take the Roman goddess named Cuba who appears to only be concerned with singing lullabies to children to get them off to sleep.

So not all gods judge our actions

Global/Universal

Um... this may seem fairly obvious to anyone who has spent any time reading about gods, but it appears that many cultures have some very specific gods who look after some very specialist and rather odd things. Anarkusuga, for instance, is a Native American/Inuit goddess who looks after the Arctic ice and its contents.

Mikula, the Slavic god, is in charge of heroics. Yup... just being heroic.

So, not all gods have a universal influence after all.

All-knowing, All-powerful, Ever-present

So far I've referenced a number of gods and goddesses, none of whom appear to be particularly all-knowing, all-powerful, or ever-present... except in their own fields of speciality perhaps. I guess tree spirits are always present in all trees, Arctic frost goddesses are to be found everywhere in the Arctic ice etc. etc.

By contrast, Buga is the supreme god of everything in the Slavic pantheon. Somewhat like the god of the Abrahamic cultures, but with the added advantage of having grown out of a more shamanic and nature-loving religion.

So not all gods are all things to all people.

All-loving

It stands to reason that a god exists which isn't all good. Yama, the Indian death lord, loves nothing more than sending your souls to Hell. Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god of night and death, actually leads people into doing evil things, despite outwardly being handsome and friendly (at first.)

So not all gods are truly omnibenevolent. Some are downright evil.

Please check out my other musings on this subject at: http://ublasphemist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-impossible-god.html

Dealing with these "omnis", with regards the Christian version of "God", is unavoidable in any honest discourse on the subject. I would argue that my simple analysis in the above blog item destroys the main thrust of their arguments, but there is another point to be made.

Logic dictates that any entity able to be omnipresent must be present in all times, at all locations, future and past and present. So, he would in effect be at the farthest reaches of our expanding universe as well as watching you masturbate.

So, if this god were to watch as a hypothetical girl like Lucy (who is walking the mile home from her school after hockey practice, along the same route she always follows) gets mugged and hits her head hard enough for her to be placed in a persistent vegetative state? How does that not seem a bit evil to you? What lesson could this God possibly be trying to teach a girl who now has absolutely no way to interact with the world, her loved ones, or friends? What possible benefit could there be to her to make her entirely dependent on others for survival? If your answer is that she has been used as a pawn to teach someone else something you've just trodden on the bear-trap of telling me that your god is playing a game with us... and he cannot possibly be benevolent.This incident has robbed Lucy of any chance she has of leading the life on her own terms, nor "find Salvation" if she wasn't already a believer... think about it... isn't leading someone away from Yahweh a sin?

If this event could be foreseen, but not prevented, because it was the free will of Lucy's attacker to injure her, in order to take her purse and smart-phone, this god isn't all-powerful.

There are several logical inconsistencies wherever you look. Your god simply cannot be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and ever-present.

Another point to consider is this, dear Christians:

If the Judeo-Christian god, Yahweh, was the only god, why does he even have a name? Why does the term Israel itself not point you in the direction that the original god of the Jews was El? Is-ra-EL. If the people were exclusively Yahweh worshippers their name would have been Is-ra-YAHU... but it isn't is it?

How's about you have a nice cup of tea and think about that for a while... or you can add a plate of biscuits to that and do some research of your own into how Yahweh went from being a Canaanite storm god to being the principle god of the Jews around 720BCE.

In Summary

If you're talking to Christians and ask them the question "What is a god?" they nearly always ignore the question altogether. Of the few who do answer, most just point you to a Bible passage, or come up with some deepity about their god Yahweh. Fewer still actually try to answer honestly.

I'm not sure if they are deliberately failing to engage with the question because it causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance, i.e. they're being intentionally dishonest, or they just don't understand the question. Christians get repeatedly told that Yahweh is the only god, despite their Bible referencing at least a dozen other gods, and Yahweh stating himself that we should put no other gods before him in that list of ten things he's supposed to have said.


What we've seen here is that the traditional view of what a god is according to the Abrahamics does not apply to all gods. So the question remains:

What IS a god?

Check out the source for these god ideas: http://www.godchecker.com
(this post might be updated as more suggestions about what a god is are offered to me)

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. 

"Ad homs" and why they don't matter

We're all painfully aware of the theists' black and white attitudes to morality (however twisted) and the way they insist that a person's character somehow dictates the veracity of their arguments about the (non) existence of a god, or gods. This is known as an ad hominem fallacy and it roughly translates as "you're a bad person and so you know sod all" or "I don't have to listen to you because you say things I think are immoral... lalalala talk to the hand!"

Luckily we're also quite aware of the old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." Well, at least I hope we all are. Otherwise I might be talking to a few precious souls who think that insults and swearing matter. They don't. Get over yourself already!

This is the problem we have. Recently someone on the atheist side of the fence was tagged as being a racist, or sexist, or both, I wasn't really paying attention, and so his arguments were deemed null and void on the theist side. A classic ad hominem fallacy. We've all said things in the past which we regret, and I suspect that if half the stuff we think were to be broadcast we'd all be in the mire up to our necks, or personae non grata within our own communities. Such is the way of things. None of us are completely free of bias, or prejudice in our daily lives. How else do you size someone up?

Hopefully most of us are completely accepting of the big things, like LGBT rights, anti-racism, anti-bullying, anti-bigotry etc, and write off swearing at the moron who cut us up on the dual-carriageway as a blip in an otherwise flawless personality. But, would it matter a bit to the argument for God's existence if I were a racist arsehole? If I thought that the evidence for God's existence is insubstantial and therefore unproven, which it is, would being a "nigger-hater"* matter a jot as far as the debate goes?

No. Emphatically NO!

You see, it's time we stopped worrying about what people on the side of irrationality and nonsense think of us. They're not thinking clearly. Remember. They think a god exists. They're not being honest with themselves, so why would we consider what they think of us to be relevant?

What matters is the honesty of the discussion, not who's having it. Remember that according to legend, Socrates was convicted of a crime for which he received a death sentence, but nobody is writing off the Socratic Method of questioning as a dud are they?

Frankly the theists can say what they like about me. In fact I encourage them to defame me as much as they like. Perhaps they'll come up with something I've not heard from anyone else before... I doubt they'll come close to anything I've said of myself.

Our call to them should be a simple one... say whatever you want about us, as long as you're honest in the debate and everything will eventually work out.

As long as we remember to not make the same mistakes they do and try to avoid calling them names, or writing off their arguments as invalid just because they are paying money to institutions which may actively promote science denial, child abuse, abuse of civil and women's rights and hatred of gays.




*a hypothetical argument

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.

So What?

This post is for the atheists.

In my everyday conversations with theists I get a great deal of scripture quoted at me and a fair bit of the "God did this" and "God did that". As atheists, you probably all do. I mean, what else do we expect?

Theists are taught to prosletylize at us. It's in their books after all. Many of them are taught to follow certain scripts too, and this is the point we must get into our heads when we speak to them. They are parroting key lines and phrases taught to them at their places of worship. Particularly the Creationists. It's easy to believe that getting through to these folks is impossible, but it isn't. I know from experience that very often your seed of rationality can take months, or years, to bear fruit.

A little while ago I got a message from a chap who had been deconverted by something I had said months earlier. It had played on his mind and it sparked a realization. Though still a believer in an ultimate power, in a deist fashion, he no longer accepted Creationism as a valid model. Planting that seed is very important. You never know what might grow from it.

We've all heard the lines from the Theist Script a decent few hundreds of times. I don't need to reiterate them here, because the answers we should be giving don't come from a vantage point of defending our positions at all. 

In aikido, defence strategies are defined by the circle. Almost every technique relies on taking the opponent's attack and redirecting it back onto them. A swirling motion guides the attack from where it was going to where you want it to go, until ultimately it ends in a throw, a lock, or a grounding. Our strategy in defence of these theistic attacks on our credibility should be the same.

This is where the "So what?" comes in. 

The theist says "God did this..." so our answer has to be "So what? How does that action prove the current state of being of your God?" She says "God said this..." so our answer should be "So what? Why is this more important than what other gods are saying? What if it is more prudent to ignore these words in favour of our own, more successful philosophy?"

Recently the two earthquakes in Nepal have been in the news and it didn't take long for someone to attribute some of the discoveries of people alive in the rubble as 'God's mercy.' It may come across as cynical, or even nasty, but our response has to be "So what? Why did God create that earthquake in the first place? Why save that one person, but kill so many others? If it was a purely natural thing, why did God not save everyone?"

More often than not we get "the Creation happened as per the book and evolution is rubbish/lies etc" argument. Jeesh, how often do we get that?

If you'll recall in my earlier post I discussed how the idea that a god created the Earth and universe in no way supports the argument that he/she/it currently has anything to do with us.

Our answer to the "God created everything" statement has to be "So what? Why does that matter? What proof is there that this god, or any other god, interacts with us? What if, in creating everything, he blew himself to pieces? How can you get from 'God did it' to 'God still exists and he cares about what we do'?" 

There's no point arguing about science, especially abiogenesis or evolution. "How did life begin?" Is a common question. Saying "I don't know" shuts down their line of thinking because they are fuelled by anti-evolution websites which we all know they've got bookmarked already to go. Avoid trading facts with these folk. It does very little good.

It's far more important to ask questions than to present arguments:

"So what? What does X mean to Y?"

"How do you know that?"

"Why is that significant?"

"Why should I believe that?"

and so on.

However, that said, there is another set of questions which we often overlook, because we assume that the person we're speaking to is fixed in their belief and cannot be swayed. The first question is: "On a scale of zero to one hundred, how certain are you that you are correct!"

This puts the theist in the position of having to put a number on their belief, and it gives you an idea of what you're dealing with.

The next one is: "What evidence could I present to you in order to lower your belief score by just one point?" This establishes whether the theist is using evidence (or what they consider to be evidence) to form their beliefs. Technically it measures their doxastic openness... how willing they are to hear other people's opinions and change their minds if necessary.

The last one is: "What one single piece of evidence could you offer me to change my mind and make me believe in God?"

This sets in place their best pitch. Something you could explore with them, or later, or work on the next time you see them.

So, what do you do if they pitch something which makes sense and actually changes your mind? Not necessarily converts you to their religion, but makes you stop and think. What's your best strategy?

It's simple. Revise your thinking! If you feel that you might have got it wrong then do your research and assess your stance properly, and, if you are wrong, change your mind to better fit the evidence.

In other words, there's no point going into these discussions and asking questions if you're afraid to change your own mind.

If you do, so what?