Monday, February 11, 2013

Steven Pinker On The Decline Of Violence


I enjoy listening to Steven Pinker on a variety of topics. He recently has been lecturing about how levels of violence have seen a precipitous decline in recent years and what factors may have been contributing to the decline. Overall, I agree with him. Since the end of World War II the world has seen much longer periods of peace with much larger numbers of people enjoying it than ever before. We still live in a world where violence exists of course, but overall we do not have as high a chance of dying violent deaths as did our ancestors hundreds or thousands of years ago.

It is interesting to note how much violence has declined when considering the increase in secularism during those same years. I'm not saying secularism is the primary cause of lower levels of violence, but separating the government from religion has freed governments from operating under the irrational beliefs of religion. It is  more likely that the spread of liberal democracy along with secularism is the greater reason. Dr. Pinker offers some other possibilities that are worth meditating on. I'm particularly interested in how the formation of government after our evolution from hunter/gatherer tribes lead to people being able to live with expectations of law and order and free of the fear that they were always going to be attacked.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

5 Weak Arguments Atheists Commonly Make And How To Fix Them


There are theists out there who are dedicating their lives to defending their religious faith and belief in god and many of them spend years sharpening their arguments and have come up with some quite sophisticated uses of logic. That being said, I do not want my fellow non-believers to sound as ignorant as the fundis do. As atheists, non-theists, skeptics, or non-believers - whatever title you call yourself - we cannot be basing our rejection of religion and god purely on emotion. It's easy to point out some stupid verses in the Bible or the Koran and laugh and say "Look at how stupid religious people are for actually believing this stuff, ha ha." That's fine. I'm all for making fun of religious absurdities. But making fun of religion shouldn't be the basis for why you disbelieve. At its heart, there should exist an intellectual foundation for why you call yourself any of the above titles. So what I want to do here is outline some of what I think are the weakest arguments that atheists typically make and offer better alternatives that carry much more weight. None of the alternatives may be perfect or ideal, but they're certainly better than the ones more often being used.


1. I can't disprove the existence of god, but I also can't disprove the existence of unicorns, fairies and the flying spaghetti monster.

This is one of the most common arguments made by atheists and if you think about it, it isn't particularly strong. If unicorns, fairies and the flying spaghetti monster existed, they would be material beings existing inside the universe, and even here on Earth. We could technically search every square inch of the Earth and confirm that they do not exist. We could also measure their supposed effects like leaving money in exchange for teeth and watch if the money exchanged actually comes from the tooth fairy. When arguing that no one can disprove god, it is better to give a similar example that also cannot be disproven by anyone.

A better example would be to say that no one can disprove that we aren't living in a computer simulation and that we're just brains hooked up with electrodes being fed signals that give us the illusion that the world around us is real. It's impossible to disprove such a reality because we wouldn't expect to see anything different if we were in it. The atheist and theist alike has to just assume that they aren't living in a Matrix because their isn't any real testable positive evidence that their senses could use to determine such a possibility is false. The believer in the Matrix possibility has a very similar job as the theist does. He has to argue that the Matrix is real despite the absence of evidence.


Thursday, February 7, 2013

Unfalsifiable Claims


The late Christopher Hitchens was always entertaining to listen to (and to read). During his many debates with theists his critique of Christianity's negative social effects was superb. But one point he made about how theists react to scientific progress strikes me as more important than ever in light of how many theists are finally starting to embrace evolution in large numbers.

Most Christians not too long ago outright rejected Darwinian evolution on the grounds that it was incompatible with the Bible's telling of the history of life and man. They felt evolution degraded mankind as well as god. But now, after 150 years of evolution since the Origin Of The Species, after the evidence keeps building up and is undeniable, more and more theists are coming to the conclusion that evolution is true. And the position they're taking after this, is that evolution actually proves how much more amazing god is for creating such an intricate and highly complex process that brought about the various species of life, including man. Many Christians are also now saying that these natural explanations are designed by god to test our faith. So after denying evolution and the big bang for decades, suddenly they're both adopted as truth and now are being used to make the case for god.

Hitchens argued that to retroactively assimilate new scientific discoveries that were previously denied so that scripture is reinforced to make perfect sense befitting the new information, is to argue an unfalsifiable claim. How do you falsify something that "evolves" so to speak, to adapt to unfavorable conditions? Perhaps the answer is that religions like Christianity are unfalsifiable. In my mind, unless Jesus' bones are discovered, I think we'll just continue to see camps within Christianity adapt with the strategy that each new piece of data that removes the need for god's intervention is actually designed by god to test our faith in him. But they'd probably just claim that was another test of faith by god.

I suppose the ultimate unfalsifiable claim will come with the cosmological argument. But if it ever becomes provable that a universe can pop into being uncaused from nothing, theists will simply assert that it's all another test from god to demonstrate our faith in him. If someone wants to cling to a god because they feel it gives their life purpose, meaning and direction, I'm fine with that. The only place I draw the line is when belief in god violates secularism and causes stupid wars, ignorance and hatred.

How To Beat Your Slave: Answering Society's Age Old Dilemma


I remember coming across this video years ago and thought I'd blog it now. It goes over the regulations that the Bible has for beating one's slave........oh, sorry I meant indentured servant. I always seem to forget that modern Christians are uncomfortable with the word "slave" and so they'd prefer to hide behind the idea that the Bible only endorses a humane indentured servitude.

But if any Christians are reading this, I'd like to know what your reaction would be towards your faith, if you did learn for a fact that that the "slavery" in the Bible was indeed slavery as we know it (i.e. the owning of human beings by other human beings against their will, for up to an indefinite period of time).

Would it change your opinion about your religion at all? Would it make you reconsider it morally, or would you suppress or ignore this knowledge, and continue your unquestionable belief and devotion to the lord your god?

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.        (Lev. 25:44–6) 

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Why Most Atheist Debaters Suck Compared To William Lane Craig


It is true that William Lane Craig is a very good debater, perhaps the best theist debater alive. His arguments are very organized and he hardly ever skips a beat when delivering them. Many atheists who have debated him have done quite poorly and I have complained about atheist debaters before. Many of them cannot speak clearly, they fumble, they're not organized, and most importantly, when they debate Craig, they don't do their homework. When debating Craig, you cannot rely on weak arguments which he already has refuted or given sufficient counterarguments for or else he will tear them up in the rebuttals. Many atheists, I think, underestimate Craig perhaps as another unreasonable theist who relies on simple easily refutable arguments. But when Craig debates, he does it in such a way where he kind of forces you to disprove his arguments. In other words, he tries to put the burden of proof on the atheist instead of the other way around. That's why he's such a good debater. When debating Craig you do have to refute his arguments, or better put, the arguments he presents, especially the cosmological argument.

That being said, there is no atheist WLC. There is no atheist debater who has dedicated his life and career to defending atheism. When Craig debates he does his homework. He reads material his opponent has published, he is well read and knowledgeable of most of the arguments that atheists typically use and he therefore comes to the debate prepared with counterarguments for them. Atheist debaters on the other hand who've debated Craig have almost always underestimated Craig's debating skills and arguments, despite there being a tremendous amount of knowledge freely available of Craig's arguments and opinions on the internet. 

Therefore, in the future, in order for atheism to maintain the intellectual upper hand over the absurdities of religious belief and faith, we desperately need good atheist debaters on our side who are informed, articulate, charismatic, and as determined as those who argue for god. All an atheist really needs to do is study the best arguments made by theists, and find sufficient counterarguments for them. But this doesn't come easy: in order to refute the cosmological argument, one has to posses a substantial amount of scientific knowledge that often takes years to accumulate. Craig has been studying cosmology for decades and so most philosopher atheists fail to be able to articulate cosmology as good as he can. Most atheist cosmologists also fail to debate the philosophical aspects well because science and cosmology operate very differently than philosophy does. Craig has cornered both markets pretty well even though I think his moral argument fails miserably (see posts here and here). So unless we get a person who has all those attributes I mentioned above in addition to dedicating their life for defending atheism, we will not get an atheist debater as good as WLC.


Case in point: The recent Rosenberg v. Craig debate Is Faith in God Reasonable?

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Atheism Is Only A Justification Of Sin


Just about every time I read about Christians defending their doctrines it makes me want to puke. They say sin leads to atheism, and atheism is really just a way for people to justify their sins. Let's examine this for a bit. Why is a sin a sin? Take sex outside of marriage for example, which pretty much everyone in the industrialized world does. Is it really harmful, like in the way murder is harmful? Or is it a sin because the Bible says so? Before the invention of birth control, and effective condoms, sex outside of marriage could lead to unwanted pregnancy, and in the traditional societies of antiquity, this could spell a lot of trouble. A woman who had sex with multiple men could get pregnant, and if the men weren't seriously involved with her, they might not be willing to take care of the child especially since they might not know for sure if it was theirs.  So it's easy to see the source of why we'd think of fornication as sinful.

Fast forward to the modern world, and men and women can have sex without the consequences of sex due to technological advances like birth control. So now we can all fuck to our heart's desire, and wake up the next morning free of any long-term consequences. The pervasiveness of fornication enrages religious conservatives and many correlate the rise in atheism as society's quest to rid itself of the guilt and sin associated with it. It's interesting to note however, that many people raised in the modern world in progressive environments don't even have that guilt associated with fornication that existed before.

Let's face it, the sexual revolution happened, and the cat's out of the bag. We are never going back to those puritan times that many religious conservatives are longing for. Our evolved intellect has enabled us to create technology that has fundamentally changed the nature in which we can have sex. Even though sex has always been about pleasure, we now we have the means to maximize that pleasure with none of the consequences we traditionally faced.

So while many atheists (and theists alike) are living lifestyles that were (and are) traditionally considered sinful, anyone who seriously questions the nature of "sin" and the moral arguments behind it, realizes that many of them are pretty much founded on the Bible saying so. And since the Bible is a very bad attempt at a historical document, and contains such harmful commandments like killing gay people (Leviticus 20:13) and even female victims of rape (Deuteronomy 20-22), there's no morally justifiable reason why we should seriously consider violations of rules in its pages as anything worthy of respect. A morally responsible atheist today realizes that the "sins" of the Bible are only justified by supposed divine commandments, and if we were to take them seriously, we might have a society today that is doing what Leviticus and Deuteronomy recommend above, and that would be the greater "sin".

Monday, February 4, 2013

Absence Of Evidence: Why Is God So Timid?


Until getting into the atheism/theism debates I did not know there were schools of theologians trying to make logical and sophisticated arguments for the existence of god. What I was more familiar with were the loudmouth fundamentalists who portray religion in its most stupid form. What the fundis actually do, is make religion seem like it's for uneducated idiots who are willing to believe anything, no matter how irrational it is. They unknowingly actually hurt their religion and its cause by making it look so unsophisticated. Since the evolution/creation debate is over, (with evolution having clearly won) I do not plan on spending any significant amount of time in the future arguing the truth of evolution. Enough information is out there for anyone who wants to see the arguments and evidence on both sides of the issue.

What I am interested in is how religions have adapted to the truth of evolution by incorporating it into their beliefs. Even the Catholic Church and a growing number of Protestant churches are embracing evolution, something which was unthinkable just a few decades ago. This growing acceptance of evolution, which is even occurring among many Muslims too, has created a kind of religion 2.0 that brands itself as the new and improved theism, and not the old fashioned faith your parents knew. While there are still plenty of holdouts clinging onto a strict fundamentalist view of their religion, the scientific community is ecstatic that large numbers of the faithful are finally embracing what scientists already knew for 150 years. This new-found enlightenment comes with more questions about the role of religion and of god however..

I'm more focused on the more sophisticated arguments for god's existence like the cosmological and moral arguments. Theologians like William Lane Craig have tried to use logic along with scientific data to make as strong a case as possible that there exists a god, and that he had a son named Jesus. And this has recently got me asking the following questions: What kind of evidence does an atheist need to make his case? How do you disprove the existence of something that is totally undetectable? William Lane Craig's website ReasonableFaith.org has taken on these questions on along with many others. So let's see what the response is to the absence of evidence that atheist's point out.

One traditional argument made by atheists is that the absence of evidence of god is itself evidence of absence. Theists counter that if god exists, we wouldn't necessarily expect to see the kind of evidence atheists are asking for. This is usually justified for the following reasons:

  1. Man's sinful nature can obscure his ability to see truth by temporarily hindering his cognitive faculties. 
  2. Atheists require standards that are too high when theists assert a premise used to logically deduce god's existence from it (i.e. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence" from the Cosmological Argument).
  3. God doesn't actually want people to merely believe he exists, he wants people to voluntarily love him.

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