The Atheism FAQ

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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 9

What is the Atheist Praxeology?

So if the motivating force behind human nature is to further the replication of the information stored in our DNA, but the agreed consensus is that it would be good for society if people lived their lives with a certain amount of benevolence and cooperation, such as the sort of ethical reciprocity encoded in the Golden Rule ("Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss."), how does Atheism address the real life situation where these two conflict?

The answer lies in the concepts of Rights, Liberty, Justice and the Social Contract...



"All men are born free and equal."
--John Adams

"No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land."
--Magna Carta

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
--John Stuart Mill's 'harm principle' from his book On Liberty

"Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others."
--John Rawls's 'first principle of justice' from his book A Theory of Justice

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

The law, inasmuch as it is created by the people acting as a body, is not a limitation of individual freedom, but its expression. Thus, enforcement of law is not a restriction on individual liberty, as the individual, as a citizen, explicitly agreed to be constrained if, as a private individual, he did not respect his own will as formulated in the general will. Because laws represent the restraints of civil freedom, they represent the leap made from humans in the state of nature into civil society. In this sense, the law is a civilizing force.
--paraphrase of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from his book The Social Contract.



So, for Atheists, the authority of the state does not stem from any divine mandate, nor are rights inalienable things granted by God. People are granted rights by the state, and the state is granted its authority by the people. This covenant in which these are exchanged is the social contract - an implicit agreement to abide by the rules of the society you accept membership of. The studies of how humans interact in and form societies and cultures are called "sociology" and "anthropology".

It may seem like this idea of liberty boils down to the Silver Rule:

"First, do no harm"
--The Hippocratic Oath

"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow."
--Hillel the Elder

with no positive obligation to help, beyond the minimum required not to harm, and this would seem to be reflected in many of the rights that modern societies have chosen to grant, which are formulated as rights for their citizens to be free from the state doing certain things to them (such as torturing them, or trying to prevent them moving from city to city) which don't entail an obligation upon the state to help the citizen overcome obstacles not placed there by the state (such as pain from a disease, or lack of funds to pay for transport).

For example, most of the rights listed in:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
However there's one important right, that stems back to the animal drive to hold territory and store resources, that we need to discuss in detail: the right to own property.

With ownership of an object comes the freedom to dispose of it as you will and thus contracts to exchange objects with other free individuals which (if entered into with the undeceived and uncoerced consent of all parties) are binding. From this concept of property, and a medium of exchange ("money") we get economics, which raises the question of what the fair and just distribution of resources in society should be. And this is where the political tension between the Silver Rule and the Golden Rule enters into our story. How much of a person's wealth and income is it just or wise for a society to require, under the social contract, that a citizen surrender each year to the state in order to retain their citizenship? Should only enough be collected to maintain the Silver Rule, leaving all insurance and charity to personal preference, or does it benefit society to institute some measure of collectivised insurance and charity to compensate for the vagaries of happenstance, for discrimination by individuals or organisations other than the state, and for the inequalities of opportunity caused by those with disproportionately high levels of resources leveraging the resulting power to gain an even greater share and pass that advantage on to their offspring?

Secular societies are no closer to reaching a consensus on this question than non-secular societies, but most consider a certain amount of collectivised charity (such as free or subsidised education for young children) and collectivised insurance (such as maintaining a military defence force) to be just as much a sound long term financial investment as investment in common public goods (such as a transport infrastructure and scientific research).

A secular society, by the way, is one in which the state does not endorse any particular religion as being superior to any other; nor does it discriminate between individuals based upon their membership (or lack of membership) of a religion but, rather, it judges each individual upon that individual's own actions. It has nothing to do with whether or not the guiding values behind the state's laws are in accordance with the values of any particular religion.

Part of the reason why the rights granted by societies deal with things like property and membership of groups is that human identity is fluid. There's a biological basis to this, seen with the phantom limbs of amputees and in the way a driver can concentrate so hard that their sense of body extends to include the car itself, and they physically wince away from an approaching branch. It is part of the same brain mechanism that sees us identify with other people, unrestrained, in certain mental states (eg meditation) or under the influence of certain chemicals. People identify as their job role, their religion, their property, the point of view from their visual senses, or even a physical organ they mistakenly believe to be the seat of emotions (the heart). From the point of view of science, we can talk about the atoms that make up a humans's body, the information stored in their DNA and brain, or the external information stored about them in books and brains of others; but there is no basis upon which we can state that one combination of these is the 'correct' identity of a person (or even that a person has a single identity that is stable over time). Turner's self-categorization theory talks about this, and is part of the science of "social psychology" which studies how people influence each other's thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

This view of humans as prone to being irrationally swayed by social pressures contrasts sharply with the Homo economicus of Adam Smith's rational action theory but is increasingly being taken into account by behavioural economics which uses game theory to model humans as agents with cognitive biases and social preferences.

How accurate is this view of human nature? Human as neither fully rational nor fully irrational, neither intrinsically psychopathic nor intrinsically 100% altruistic, but all shades in between? In the last few years the US military has run simulations of entire Iraqi villages, using meme theory and the scientific view of human nature, individual villagers represented by software agents of varying personality types, interacting with each other and spreading competing rumours around the virtual model of the village. The results have been remarkably accurate to what happened in the actual village. That's what science does - it builds increasingly accurate models of reality, and that's what it has now achieved with modelling human behaviour.



What does the Atheist world-view look like from the perspective of the Christian world-view?

A Christian critique of Atheism needs to say not only why they think the Atheist narrative is flawed, but also explain why, given those flaws, there are still so many people who find it to be more plausible or attractive than the Christian narrative - how did Atheism come about, if the world started initially Christian?

I've listed elsewhere in this FAQ many of the Christian objections to the Atheist narrative, but now is the time to provide the remainder of the critique.



From the Old Testament, first came wickedness (when men stopped trying to obey the Lord) then came disbelief (after the Lord scattered humankind, breaking the continuity of oral history). Thus was Atheism born:

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. " (Genesis 11:9)

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." (Psalm 14:1)

"As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." (Proverbs 26:11)



The Christian narrative is not less plausible than the Atheist narrative. The Atheist view of what happened in the past is based upon theories, not facts, not first hand eye-witness accounts of the life of the first man and woman. Humans are designed to know, in their hearts, that science reveals only a heartless and imperfect view of reality that changes every week, elliminating as it does consideration of direct evidence that the Holy Spirit reveals to us. Whereas, for those who accept the Holy Spirit into their hearts, the Christian narrative sings with a certainty that has never changed in over 2000 years.

In the Atheist world-view morality is relative (however much hand waving they might try to paper over with 'consensus') but everyone (unless they are a psychopath) instinctively know this is incorrect; some despicable acts are absolutely wrong, and would be in any universe - and even the hardened atheist will feel guilt and shame for doing them, even when alone on a desert island with no 'consensus' to condemn them for it.



So why do Atheists stick with their Atheism? Christ returned to Earth bearing the Good News for everyone, but He knew there would be those not open to accepting it. You can lead a mule to water, but you can't make them drink. The Atheist is like a swimmer who, against the counsel of wiser heads, insists on swimming out into uncertain waters. When the lifeboat turns up and offers to throw a rescue ring, the Atheist is too proud to accept it and, in his foolishness declares the ring to be a stone weight, despite the evidence of his eyes that the others folks rescued and drying themselves off on the boat are far happier than those desperately swimming around trying to find firm footing. Some Atheists will even yell insults at those offering to throw a ring, jeering at the rescuers because the Atheists don't want to admit to themselves they were wong and are afriad of being judged - being seen to have made a bad decision.

Christ predicted this. From the New Testament we have:

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me." (John 15:18-21)

"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet." (Matthew 10:14)

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (Matthew 7:6)

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." (Romans 3:10-11)

"we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." (Romans 14:10-11)

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:" (Matthew 25:31-32)



Peter Hitchens writes:

We choose the belief we prefer. The only interesting part of this discussion concerns our reasons for our choices. I have found atheists, for the most part, reluctant to discuss this...

Religious believers are entitled... to speculate on why someone would not wish to be bound by an unalterable moral law. And they are justified in asking why this wish should be so profound that such persons actively desire that the universe should be a pointless and meaningless chaos, without design or purpose.

An atheist in a society still governed by the Christian moral law has great personal advantages. The almost universal idea among the college-educated young, a sort of crude J.S. Mill belief that 'nobody has the right to tell me what to do' is a very powerful force in modern western societies, excusing as it does a great deal of sexual promiscuity and drug-taking which do immense damage and create huge unhappiness....

My conclusion, after dozens of such arguments, is that the atheist can see quite clearly the advantages of his unbelief... But he can also see that if these advantages would pretty rapidly disappear if everyone discovered them and exploited them.

...an atheist in a society in which the postman and the policeman, the doctor, the civil servant, the politician, the banker, and your employer, not to mention your next-door neighbours, are entirely free from universal moral obligations is, ah, more problematic. As we increasingly find out.



Daily we see on television the consequences of this declining morality (pornography, promiscuity, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, drugs) as God is removed from or reviled in schools, state and the media. War, crime and all things bad are increasing. Family, purity, respect, politeness and common decency are in decline as desire for unearned money and indiscriminate tolerance fight to take God's rightful place in society.



And, finally, here's Jesus own words on why there are goats in the world as well as sheep - his explanantion of the Parable of the Sower (I've given the versions from both Mark and Matthew):

"

9And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

10And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable.

11And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

12That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

13And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?

14The sower soweth the word.

15And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.

16And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness;

17And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.

18And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word,

19And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

" (Mark 4)



"

9Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

10And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

11He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

12For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

13Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

14And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:

15For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

16But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

17For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

" (Matthew 13)



Convincing, yes? Reading those words you feel a warm certainty inside you.

But now comes the hard bit. The next few parts of this FAQ are about what the Christian world-view looks like from outside - from an Atheist point of view. With what mindset should you read them? Combatative and scanning only to find the first bit you disagree with? Gullibly, accepting it without evidence as gospel truth? Or is there a third option? Here's a zen koan:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868–1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

There's a word for this concept that's used in the bible: "selah". It can indicate a point in a psalm where there should be a musical interlude. It means "Pause a moment, quiet your mind, open yourself to listening."





*** Selah ***
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 10

What does the Christian world-view look like from the perspective of the Atheist world-view?

An Atheist critique of Christianity needs to say not only why we think the Christian narrative is flawed, but also explain why, given those flaws, there are still so many people who find it to be more plausible or attractive than the Atheist narrative - how did Christianity come about, if the world started initially Atheist?

I'll split this into three answers:

The origins of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective
The attractions of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective
The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective


The origins of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective

I'm going to further split this:

What are the adaptive advantages of religiosity?
How do religions evolve?
What is the evolutionary history of ancient Judaism?
What is the evolutionary history of modern Christianity?


What are the adaptive advantages of religiosity?

Large brains are expensive. The brain is responsible for 20% of the energy human bodies use (compared to 13% for chimps, and 2-8% for other vertebrates - source). Visually-oriented animals in a competitive hunter-prey environment conducive to hiding and stalking (such as a forest or savannah) who can recognise patterns in incomplete data thus generating hypotheses to explain what they are seeing, gain an advantage from this ability to predict., and so tend to have larger (or more active) brains for their body size.

The evolutionary pressure is not towards making perfectly accurate hypotheses. Rather, the advantage goes to the animal who generates an hypothesis quickly enough to escape a tiger before the tiger pounces, and there is a bias towards seeing a pattern where none exists, over missing a pattern where one does exist, because it is better to run away from shadows unnecessarily nine times if, on the tenth time, you escape being pounced upon. (Or, from the tiger's point of view, the reward of catching a meal outweighs the cost of investigating a few rustling bushes that turn out to be just the wind.)

Compared to plants, the bodies of other animals provide a rich bounty of calories and nutrients. Animals, such as wolves, dolphins and apes, that hunt as a group using tactics (and who communicate to coordinate) can afford larger brains if using group tactics provides a sufficient advantage in calories gained that it compensates for the additional calories expended in the thinking needed to do the prediction, coordination and awareness of social roles/status required to carry the tactics out.

Bipedalism offers apes a number of advantages (reach higher, wade deeper, run faster, see further) however the resulting hips compared to the adult brain size means that the children are born at a comparatively earlier developmental point compared to non-bipedal animals or ones with smaller brains. Baby chimps or humans are helpless and dependant upon their mother for much longer than baby lions or horses, despite lions and horses being large animals with a long life expectancy. This vulnerable stage (and the necessity for group defence against external threats) leads to a species with complex social dynamics, interactions and emotions. This extended childhood also provides an adaptive advantage to those family units where the children have a prolonged 'tame' phase in which the children remain in the safety of the authority of the adult parental figures, accepting what they say as true, learning from them, trying to 'fit in'. In dogs and cats that are domestic (as opposed to feral) you also see this personality phase prolonged into adulthood.

There is much more to the tale of why it was humans who have developed the intelligence they have, and where factors like tool use, fire, specialisation, trade, sexually-selected for ornamentation and Machiavellian social politics come into it. Too much to do justice to here - if you're interested I recommend the books "Up from Dragons" and "The Ancestor's Tale". However we have enough of the tale to now start talking about magic and religiosity.

Magical thinking is a by-product of pattern recognition. When a creature sees that two things are correlated and decides that one of them is causing the other, they are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. When it works, that can be very important. The principle of sympathy (like produces like) gives a prediction that's better than a random guess in many situations, and the principle of contagion (what happens to one bit, happens to the rest of the thing) has predictive power in situations relating to disease, contamination, complex social situations, or anywhere there may be a hidden third factor at work.

When magic thinking is combined with the ability to hypothesise the intentions of a sentient being behind otherwise unrelated events (an important ability in Machiavellian social politics), we get Animism (and Totemism) - the hypothesis that there are sentient spirits associated particular locations or things, that can influence physical reality, that have emotions and personalities, and that can be influenced by actions in physical reality.

Combined with some features of how consciousness is implemented in our brains that leads to the illusion that consciousness never ceases, and it is a short step from spirits to ancestor worship and the idea that humans have a spirit that lives on after death. These basics are a cultural universal, which indicates they have a biological basis rather than a culture-specific one. Not only are these polytheistic beliefs present in the earliest hunter-gatherer cultures we know of (the San Bushmen in Africa, and Aboriginal Indigenous in Australia), there are strong indications (eg burial, and flowers left on graves) that Neanderthals had them too.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... er-say-die

In terms of the neurology of the brain, modern religions are not much different. Religiosity is how religious a person is - how much they think, feel and behave in a religious manner. Many studies have investigated the question of whether religiosity is due to genetics, shared parental environment, personality or other factors. What they've discovered is that multi dimensional scaling can be used to factor religiosity into three dimensions:

Involvement (Are supernatural agents, eg the Christian God, involved with life on a daily and personal basis?)
Emotion (Are these supernatural agents more loving and forgiving, than wrathful and punishing?)
Knowledge (Does religion tell us more about the big picture, eg "How the world was created?", than about the small picture, eg "How should I vote in the next election?")
and that these dimensions each directly correspond to activity in three specific parts of the brain involved with Theory of Mind. This directly explains why people on the autistic end of the spectrum tend to have a lower religiosity than people on the schizophrenic end of the spectrum (link). It also explains why there is a strong correlation between religiosity and scores on two of the four Myers-Briggs scales ("Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)" and "Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)" ) with people on the NT end being less religious, on average.

Here's an article with more in-depth information about the neuroanatomy of religiosity, but before I leave the brain, I want to touch on the debate over whether it is the brain causing the religiosity or whether it is how a person has thought and used their brain while growing up that is the cause of the changes in the brain. The latter may have seemed plausible 20 years ago, but they have since done twin studies and even tracked down specific genes. There is definitely a significant genetic component to religiosity, and a majority of the causality between brain and practice is in the direction of the brain affecting the practice not vice versa.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0007180

In other words, if there's a supernatural creator who designed humankind, then He deliberately created some individuals to be, right from birth, less likely to believe in Him.

So, if religiosity is significantly genetically based, why wasn't it selected against in the tribal environment? In evolutionary terms, religiosity started as a spandrel - a by-product of something else that is selected for. However, once it had started, it turned out that religions can have positive effects upon the survival of the genes of a tribe of believers. By appealing to the human instinct for a protective authority to shelter them, it improves cohesion and discipline in a tribe. In times of war, the idea of luck and a protective spirit you can pray to (a concept straight out of totems and magical thinking, and something you often see when people roll dice) improves morale. In times of peace, the idea of reward or punishment being handed out in an afterlife makes people more content with the status quo, reducing anxiety (which improves health). For these group selection effects not to suffer from the 'free rider' problem, it is also necessary for religions to include a doctrine of shunning or otherwise punishing members of the tribe who refuse to act as though they believe. (The logic behind the power of blood and sacrifices, by the way, stems from the contagion part of magical thinking, and is very useful for a religious leader when it comes to demanding tithes, altruism or picking people to go out to fight on the religion's behalf in battle.)

We're now going to move on to look at what happened when this instinctive religiosity moved from a tribal environment to larger, more complex societies, and whether it remained an adaptive advantage. However, before I do, here are some links to the growing body of research that's been done on this topic:

Evolutionary Religious Studies - resources page http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/resources/
EXREL http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/resear ... l-science/
The Adaptive Logic of Religious Beliefs and Behaviour http://evolution-of-religion.com/publications/
In Gods We Trust https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0195 ... x151867-21


How do religions evolve?

About 11000 years ago, a major technological breakthrough was made in the Fertile Crescent (the flood plains of the Nile, Jordan, Tigris and Euphrates rivers): a grass, einkorn wheat, was domesticated. The floods ensured the nutrients in the soil didn't get depleted, and the increased yields from the strain of wheat selectively bred by generations of gatherers meant that, for the first time in history, a food source in one location was so abundant that having granaries to store the surplus outweighed the benefits of moving around to take advantage of migrating animals. Agricultural civilisation had arrived and, with it, the flat social structure of the hunter-gatherer tribes was supplanted by governmental forms with specialised leaders, hierarchies and bureaucracy. (It happened in the Fertile Crescent, rather than on other flood plains because, as the meeting point of Africa, Europe and Asia it retained greater biodiversity when other areas became squeezed by climate changes. It happened 11000 years ago, rather than earlier or later, because of the stability from the Holocene inter-galacial period.)

The faiths of hunter-gatherer tribes tended to be local to each tribe, with just a few shared archetypes (such as having a mother goddess in charge of things like fertility and childbirth - Hathor, from Egypt, is a good example of this). With civilisation and fixed end points for boats and caravans to aim at, came greater trade and communication. And, with it, the spread of ideas. With storehouses full of grain, and rulers with specialised soldiers, came war, conquest, and further spread of ideas. With hierarchies and rulers needing to tax a population of farmers to support soldiers and the construction of buildings came a selective pressure upon those ideas. If you are a ruler whose priest of Hathor is telling the farmers that you've the support of the gods and they need to tithe grain to you if the gods are to be pleased and grant them a good harvest next year, then it matters to you whether the farmers are worshipping Hathor, rather than Isis, Ninsun, Ashtart, Asherah, Ninhursag, Gaia or Allat - Goddesses with similar roles (and often shared symbology and mythology), but different names.

One of the first changes implemented by the priestly class (specialists who, supported by the abundant food, could be supported by city to do nothing but intervene with the spirits on behalf of the people) was to formalise a local polytheistic collection of worshiped greater and lesser spirits into a hierarchy - a pantheon of named Gods that defined who was 'in' and who was 'out', and set demarcation on which spirit you sacrificed to for intervention with which aspect of nature (who did storms, who did grain fields, who did fishing, who did war, etc). And, being priests, this was done in the form of a story - which gods in the pantheon came first, who married whom, who gave birth to whom (and how - being created from a body part or secretion of another god, was popular). As worship of heroic ancestors combined with hereditary rulers you sometimes got not only rulers who acted as priests, but also rulers who were worshipped as semi-divine (or who would be, upon death, and who planned ahead).

The concept of 'god' vs 'demon' wasn't as clear cut then as it is now. The patron deity of the city on the other side of the valley was a spirit, just as your patron deity was, and you hoped that yours would be more powerful than theirs and help you win the upcoming war against them (monolatrism). 'Good' versus 'Bad' was more a sense of 'these guys are good for us'. To use football as a metaphor, it is a sense of 'our team' versus 'their team'. As the stories of the priests became more complex, the home team deities started being portrayed as not just the local spirit the local people prayed to for intervention in a particular area of nature, but the creator of that aspect everywhere, the sole deity of it, requiring that the competing deities from other regions be cast into lesser roles and unfavourable lights. (A belief in prayer, by the way, is also a consequence of magical thinking: link, link.)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/21263?page=4

http://www.skepdic.com/magicalthinking.html

Over time, as factions of priests within a religion competed for power, it was common to see the religion's 'back story' change, with the previous head of a pantheon being demoted to a minor god of hunting or some such, and a new deity being credited with the creation of the world (sometimes both, with the world being created from the slain body of the being who, 200 years earlier, had been worshipped as the chief god in that same region). As empires grew, spread, merged and crumbled, you also saw pantheons merging, with new deities being added into the story, roles changing and names of similar deities being hyphenated then merged.

And it wasn't just religions that evolved by competing against each other for individual worshippers and nations, growing, splitting and mutating by changing deities, the properties of deities, and the religion's back story and practices. In the same way that biological evolution can be seen from the point of view of the genes rather than the individual creatures, the cultural evolution of religions can be seen from the point of view of the memes (specific doctrines and practices) rather than the individual religions. Doctrines, practices and archetypal story elements change inside religions and pass between religions fairly easily, sometimes associated with a particular deity, but often centered on a particular city, sect, priesthood or community of worshippers and staying with them even as the city passes from the control of one religion to another as the city is conquored by a different empire. The Roman conquest of Greece is a great example of this, where many of the elements of the resulting religion ended up being far more Greek than Roman.

BCE

60,000 - Neanderthal buried with flowers in the Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq
9000 - Granaries first appear in villages, and spread through the fertile crescent
9000 - Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey - world's oldest religious structure: animal spirit pictograms
8000 - The city of Jericho builds a large wall to defend against the river Jordan flooding
8000 - Wooden structures at Stonehenge in England, precursor to the later stone circle
7000 - The settlement of Lepenski Vir, in Serbia. by 5500 BCE they are smelting copper.
6000 - The port city of Ugarit founded, in Syria
5000 - Cities on the island of Crete trade with both Ugarit and Egypt
5000 - The city of Uruk (Erech) founded in Sumer (Shinar)
4100 - Temples built on Malta, showing organised religion fully established
3500 - Sumerians build the City of Ur: cuniform writing
2250 - The city of Babylon (Babel) founded; has a tower

Image

By this time the original Sumerian religion has spread throughout Mesopotamia and on, to influence religions in both Greece and Egypt. There's a complex pantheon, and each region has varying names for the deities in it. Each city has its own patron deity (accorded the title of "El", "Baal" or "Marduk", depending upon region).

Code: Select all

City     Deity      Role

Erech    An         Lord of the Sun
Eridu    Enki       Lord of Water
Nippur   Enlil      Lord of Wind
Ur       Nanna      Lord of the Moon
Babylon  Haddad     Lord of Lightning
Carthage Kronos     Lord of Time (Egyptian: Amun, Sumer: Hamman)
Sippar   Shamash    Lord of Justice
         Ishtar     Queen of Heaven
         Anat       A virgin war goddess (a mix of An and Ishtar)
         Mot        Lord of the Underworld (Death)
etc.
Here's a simplified diagram, showing one local version of just part of the pantheon:

Image

For more info, see: full list of gods, more complex diagram, timeline

http://sarissa.org/sumer/sumer_g.php

http://svr225.stepx.com:3388/mesopotamia/file/58483.jpg

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/time/explore/main_mes.html

An example of an early meme that spread through the region is the explanation of the yearly cycle of seasons. The Sun (An, titled Baal or El, depending on the region the story is being told in) dies and his wife Anat (or, in some versions, his sister) descends to the underworld in order to contest against Mot (death). Mot doesn't want to release him, but finally agrees (after being beaten or tricked) to let him live above ground for half of each year. This resurrection story is seen everywhere, from Egypt (Osiris) to Greece (Demeter)

An example of an early religion that drew heavily on previous ones in the region, and went on to influence others, is Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster took the chief God from the Persian pantheon, Ahura Mazdā (“Wise Lord”), and declared him to be the only God, relegating a few of the most popular of other deities in the pantheon to a lesser status ("beneficent immortals"), and discarding the rest, or casting them as angels or demons. Mithra (previously the second most powerful deity in the pantheon - a warrior sun god who punished covenant breakers - 'protector of wide pasture lands') was retained, but recast as being an aspect of Ahura Mazdā. The religion also featured the memes: free will choice between good and evil, heaven, hell, confession, penance and spiritual purification via immersion in water.



For further examples of stories and deities evolving, see Titanomachy.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~doug ... butes.html
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 11

What is the evolutionary history of ancient Judaism?

In about 2200 BCE, the Amorites (a nomadic Semitic people, originally from the Levant, in Syria) were hit by a drought and migrated west to settle in the Judean mountains, in Canaan. They eventually built a number of small cities, including Shaddai, but were tall and retained a reputation for being fierce (if uncivilised) warriors. Their local patron was a variant on Enki, and was referred to as El (chief God), or to distinguish him from the chief gods of other cities, the El Shaddai (the chief God of Shaddai).

In about 1420 BCE, the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep II goes on a successful campaign in Canaan, capturing 89,600 prisoners, including some mountain Apiru or Habiru (disreputable nomadic bandits or mercenaries).

The Kenites are a tribe of Shasu (Bedouin nomadic tinkers and shepherds from Midian, in the Sinai desert) and, according to the Amarna Letters (a set of Egyptian tablets dating back to around 1340 BCE), their tribal God is YHWH.

In about 1200 BCE, there starts to be evidence of some Israeli settlements in the mountainous regions of Canaan. There's no evidence of mass invasion or slaughter - it seems to have been a merging of tribes, mainly Canaanite, with some external Kenite influence. These Israelis are monolatrist, not monotheist (monotheism hasn't been invented yet), but do worship Yahweh as their patron deity, and Ishtar alongside him, as His consort (he's even briefly added into the Canaanite pantheon, as a cupbearer and son of the chief Deity, but is swiftly promoted, in the local area, to being the chief Himself).

By about 1000 BCE, the Israelis (under a leader, David) have taken control of parts of Canaan, which splits into two Kingdoms a few years after his death:



and over the next 500 years the sources which will eventually get redacted into a single document (The Torah) are written:

BCE

950 : the Yahwist source ( J )
850 : the Elohist source ( E )
719 : Northern kingdom, Israel, falls to Assyria
600 : the Deuteronomist ( D )
587 : Southern kingdom, Judah, falls to Babylon
500 : the Priestly source ( P )




These document not only had a different style and content, they were each written for a different political purpose (eg justifying the united kingdom, versus stamping out heresy during the exile):

"J was identified with a rich narrative style, E was somewhat less eloquent, P's language was dry and legalistic. Vocabulary items such as the names of God, or the use of Horeb (E and D) or Sinai (J and P) for God's mountain; ritual objects such as the ark, mentioned frequently in J but never in E; the status of judges (never mentioned in P) and prophets (mentioned only in E and D); the means of communication between God and humanity (J's God meets in person with Adam and Abraham, E's God communicates through dreams, P's can only be approached through the priesthood)" (source)

It is notable that monotheism enters the documents only after the concept became popularised by Zoroastrianism.

For further information, see:

Canaanite FAQ http://canaanitepath.com/canaanfaq.htm
Judaism - A Historical View http://www.majorreligions.com/judaism_c ... l_view.php
Judaism Influences http://www.patheos.com/Library/Judaism/ ... ences.html
Poly-Yahwism http://thescribalpen.tumblr.com/post/17 ... -canaanite
The Origin and Growth of Religion http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BSfK ... &q&f=false
Yehouah / El Shaddai http://www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/0245Can ... ligion.php
Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israelite_religion.htm
Canaanite Religion http://www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/0245Can ... ligion.php




What is the evolutionary history of modern Christianity?

Modern Christianity evolved from ancient Judaism, and continues to evolve still. The distinction between ancient Judaism and modern Judaism is important, because Judiasm kept changing too. Modern Rabbinic Judaism didn't start until 600 CE. Back in the time of Christ, Judiasm was heavily divided. Their main holy books had been only recently written down, and the oral tradition saying how to interpret those books wouldn't be written down for another 200 years, so there was plenty of scope for different groups to place different amounts of emphasis upon which prophets were the most important. The Sadducees were the priestly class associated with the Temple; they followed the letter of the law strictly, and didn't believe in an afterlife. The Pharisees were shaped by the far harsher conditions after the Temple was destroyed; they looked for justice to happen in an afterlife, believed in prayer and the coming of a messiah. The Essenes rejected this fight for control over politics, and withdrew to live in simple communities in the desert; probably influenced by the Pythagoreans, they believed in the equality of the sexes, poverty, healing the sick, not keeping slaves, hospitality, helping outcasts, and only using violence in self-defence. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were likely trained in the Nazorean sect of Essenes. (sources: link, link, link, link)

Why do I say "likely"? Well, we actually have fewer independant sources of evidence about the life of Jesus that are generally supposed. To start with, the 4 gospels are not four independant eyewitness accounts:

Image

There are a number of theories of precisely in what order things happened, but there's general agreement that the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John all show clear evidence of being written after Mark and of copying material from Mark.

Image

Those four were not the only gospels, but the others are now considered to be non-cannonical. However this agreement on which should be counted as the 'inspired' body of literature to make up The New Testament didn't happen until over 500 years after the death of Christ. Even today there are still books that appear in Catholic bibles that don't appear in Protestant ones.

BCE
450 - Old Testament edited into a final stable form
420 - Mozi, in China, publishes writings: universal love and the Golden Rule
344 - Aristotle publishes De Caelo
330 - Israel conquered by Alexander the Great
250 - Earliest copes of the Old Testament written in Greek
67 - Worship of Mithras spread by the slaver pirates conquered then spared by Pompey
63 - Israel conquered by Romans
30 - Hillel the Elder, and the Pharisee/Sadducee/Essene split.
4 - Birth of Jesus

CE
27 - Jesus baptised by John the Baptist
32 - John the Baptist executed. Jesus leads at the feeding of the 5000.
33 - Jesus is executed on the cross. Pentecost.
36 - Paul converts to Christianity, having never met or seen Jesus
37 - Birth of Josephus, the Jewish Roman historian
47 - Doubting Thomas (Saint Thomas, the Apostle) founds the Nestorian Church, in Asia
50 - The first Apostolic council, with Paul, Peter and James (the brother of Jesus)
64 - Paul dies, Nero persecutes Christians after the Great Fire of Rome.
65 - Sayings of Jesus written down in the Q document
70 - Destruction of the second Temple by Romans, in response to a Jewish revolt
70 - Gospel of Mark, written by someone who met Saint Peter in Rome
80 - Gospel of Mathew, written based on Mark and the Q document
90 - Gospel of Luke, written based on Mark and the Q document
100 - Gospel of John, written by the community founded by John
125 - Rylands Papyrus 52 (earliest survivng fragment of any part of the New Testament)
200 - Tertullianus formalises the concept of the Trinity
200 - Jewish scholars start writing down the Oral Torah (the Mishnah and Gemara)
215 - Origen wrote On First Principles: the immortality of the soul
325 - Emperor Constantine calls the first ecumenical council at Nicea
553 - Emperor Justinian unifies doctrine and persecutes heretics: eternal damnation


What about non-gospel sources? Here's one speaker (David Fitzgerald) making the case that we have no more reliable evidence that Jesus existed than we do for King Arthur or Robin Hood, if we restricted ourselves to non-gospel sources. (He also talks about the reliability of the gospels themselves, but I'll come onto to that in a moment.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvleOBYTrDE

Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus (PDF) http://www.nazarethmyth.info/Fitzgerald2010HM.pdf
Objections to Fitzgerald. http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?a ... ald+Nailed
Fitzgerald's responses to those objections. http://davefitzgerald.blogspot.com/2012 ... ragic.html
My point here is that I say "likely" because there is serious academic doubt about the historicity of many of the details (eg money changers being driven out of the temple, part of the nativity story, events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus such as darkness falling and mass raising of the dead near Jerusalem). The question of what we can work out about the life of Jesus if we can't rely upon the gospels being word-perfect accurate is an active field of academic interest (see Historical Jesus).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicit ... s_of_Jesus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

But what about the key event? If Jesus was not bodily resurrected 3 days after being crucified, what's the atheist alternative explanation for how such a belief might have come about? Let's look at the accounts of the resurrection from each gospel, in the order that the gospels were written:

Paul - no hint of bodily resurrection. Jesus appears to witnesses after the crucifiction only in heavenly visions.
Mark - empty tomb and a messanger promising a future meeting, but no witness of bodily resurrection
Matthew - first account of someone actually seeing a bodily resurrected Jesus
Luke - much more dramatic telling of the story, with details added to fill in plot holes (eg the ascension) and forestall objections
Each gospel writer has a particular agenda and intended audience (see these pieces on the personality of Jesus and the ethics preached by Jesus, and why they vary from gospel to gospel). Each is addressing ten years or more of questions raised by the previous account, and is writing long after any eyewitnesses who might contradict their words are dead. This isn't precisely a dishonest process. The gospel writer isn't an eyewitness either - they are working from the previous tellings of the story, perhaps with the aid of a Q document (a collections of sayings attributed to Jesus), and are trying to cobble together a pleasing coherent narrative "this is how it must have been", given their limited information.

http://www.godonthe.net/evidence/gospels.htm
http://www.answering-christianity.com/b ... christ.htm
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/JesusEthics.htm

For a much more detailed analysis, here's an excellent piece written by a Christian Bishop: the resurrection. http://johnshelbyspong.com/sample-essay ... urrection/

And, even when written, things didn't remain fixed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE


Indeed, modern Christianity as it is preached and practiced, bears little resemblance to early Christianity. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... rsity.html How the words of the Bible are interpreted has left large scope for continued evolution of the religion:

CE
632 - Death of Muhammad ibn Abdullah, founder of Islam
650 - Earliest surviving fragment from the Qur'an
1054 - Great Schism - Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic churches separate
1099 - Crusaders conquer Jerusalem
1274 - Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica
1277 - Tempier's Condemnations: the primacy of divine omnipotence over reason
1321 - Dante publishes The Divine Comedy: firey pits of hell
1455 - Gutenberg's Bible
1487 - The Inquisition publishes the Malleus Maleficarum: witchcraft and satanism
1521 - Protestant and Catholic churches separate
1611 - Publication of the King James Version of the Bible
1633 - Galileo Galilei tried and imprisoned for the heresy of thinking the Earth moves
1739 - George Whitefield's Great Awakening brings the Evangelical revival to America
1770 - The Enlightenment: Holbach's The System of Nature and Diderot's Encyclopedia
1779 - Act of Toleration amended, the rise of Liberal Christianity: Quakers, Unitarians
1787 - Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed
1854 - Pope decrees doctrine of Mary's Immaculate conception
1859 - Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species: universal common descent
1862 - Phineas Quimby sparks the New Thought movement: Prosperity theology
1870 - Doctrine of Papal infallibility
1878 - The Niagara Bible Conferences publish their 14 point statement of faith
1906 - The Pentecostal revival: primacy of healing, speaking in tongues and other miracles
1921 - William Bryan starts the campaign against 'Darwinism'
1928 - Women gain the vote in Britain
1930 - Wilkinson publishes Our Authorised Bible Vindicated: divine preservation of the KJV
1961 - Henry Morris publishes The Genesis Flood: Young Earth creationism
1963 - Brother Hagin broadcasts: Word of Faith, Positive Confession, Televangelism
1965 - Pope decres Dei Veibum
1967 - Homosexuality decriminalised in Britain
1978 - Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

The interpretation of Christianity practiced in a baptist church today, or even a catholic one, shows clearer signs of having adapted to prevailing political environments over the years (eg on slavery, the equality of women and the divine right of kings) than it does of being an unwavering single divine moral voice that people may vary from but doesn't itself move.

Image

On the contrary, when you look at how the different doctrines spread through a geographic area over time, what you see is an organic pattern of growth and competition that's precisely the same as you observe when you watch how a species changes and spread over time, competing with other species and adapting to new environments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvFl6UBZLv4
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 12

The attractions of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective

This is the second section in our break down of how modern Christianity appears from the perspective of an Atheist world-view. In the first section we covered an atheist explanation of how Christianity evolved. In the third section we'll cover what, from the perspective of an atheist world-view, appear to be flaws in the Christian narrative. In this section we're going to cover an atheist explanation of why people born to Christian parents, in a society where Christianity is the most common religion, become Christians. Why they believe.

Colds pass around when the weather gets chillier or people's immune system are otherwise lowered. First a person is exposed to a strain of virus they are susceptible to and it gets inside their body - they are infected. Second, once inside, the virus fights the immune system and is either defeated or it gains hold and overwhelms the system - it grows. Third, the virus changes to fit the flaws in the host (thus deveoping new strains), and changes the host to better fit it - it adapts. Fourth, a specific change the virus makes in the host is altering its behaviour to increase the chances of the virus being spread on to new hosts (eg sneezing in the case of colds, but also being passed onto partners and children for other viruses) - it spreads.

In the same way that a cold virus is a collection of DNA genes, we're going to look at a religion as a collection of doctrinal memes, and examine how they fit the flaws in people's mental immune systems:

How do Christian doctrines infect?
How do Christian doctrines grow?
How do Christian doctrines adapt?
How do Christian doctrines spread?


How do Christian doctrines infect?

It is a lot easier for a belief (of any sort, not just religious ones) to appeal to a person's emotions and subconscious instinct-driven mind, than it is to appeal to their rationality. We've already seen how some people are, from birth, more prone to relying upon their feelings and intuition over their conscious logical thought and external senses. People also tend to be less rational when they are young or stressed.

Indeed, despite children going through rebellious phases where they want to prove their independence and differentiate themselves from their parents, on average young children are primed to accept as true 'general knowledge' they are told by authority figures - it tends to bypasses all objective rational evaluation, because they trust. Later in life a religious person may change denomination but, if they stay religious at all, less than 5% switch to a religion that is different from the one they were raised in for the first seven years of their life (eg going from Christian to Hindu, or vice versa).



There has been extensive research done on how children think at various ages, and how that ties in with their developing conception of a personal God. All young children are animists, however as they grow older the concept of a personal God serves as a surrogate attachment figure, and how this is strengthened depends upon their initial parental attachment. Insecurely attached children are most likely to be strengthen their attachment to God during those periods in their life when their primary attachments (to their parents, or sexual partners) are being weakened, or when they are feeling more in need of security (such as in sickness, in danger or in old age). Securely attached children, on the other hand, tend to strengthen their attachment to God when their other attachments are also strong.

It is from this former type that Feuerbach gets his idea of 'religion as wish fulfillment'. He writes: "the whole world, with all its pomp and glory, is nothing weighed against human feeling. This 'omnipotence of feeling' breaks through all the limits of understanding and manifests itself in several religious beliefs: the faith in providence, which is a form of confidence in the infinite value of one's own existence; faith in miracle, the confidence that the gods are unfettered by natural necessity and can realize one's wishes in an instant; and faith in immortality, the certainty that the gods will not permit the individual to perish."

Apologetics such as C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia introduce certain concepts very early, and set an expectation of what natural justice is. And even in children's stories that are not explicitly Christian, magic is common, sarcrifices (or arduous quests) can be demanded by authority figures, and faith is generally rewarded. Classical art, music and literature are all filled with Christian imagery. Just by being raised by Christians or in a culture with a Christian heritage, people are likely to think that certain concepts are plausible or good, so when they then get a certain type of mental experience, they are primed to accept it and interpret it as being the love of Jesus or divine guidance, and confirmation of the Christian world-view they've already been exposed to and already half-accept as plausible without having to think about it. (People raised with different expectations, on the other hand, when they make a supernatural interpretation of such experiences at all, often differ strongly in how they interpret it: aliens, multiple entities, trees and Nature, voices of ancestors, etc. The emotions and imagery they then associate with it can also vary.)

So what, then, are these experiences, that Christians interpret as absolutely certainty, direct divine revelation and a personal relationship with God?

The temporal lobe is the part of the brain where we process sound and vision signals and tie them in with memory - it is the bit that tells us whether an image is coming from outside or inside, how 'real' it is. When it doesn't function correctly (such as during an epileptic seizure or after a blow to the head) this can lead to visions; but it can also experience abnormally activity in religious people when they are exposed to certain religious cues (link). There is debate over whether this can also be externally triggered by a special helmet designed to emit particular magnetic fields (the "Koren helmet") or whether that is just an unusually good cue for those who are suggestible in that direction. (You can read the two sides of the debate here and here.) Either way, though, an experience indistinguishable from 'real' religious revelation can be re-created on demand by scientists. (Further info: a program by the BBC, and a book on it.)

Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) is, by the way, also associated with activity in the temporal lobe. (link)



How do Christian doctrines grow?

Once a person has been exposed to Christian doctrines and initially convinced of their truth, how do those doctrines then act to preserve and increase that belief, in the face of increased mental opposition as the person grows older, has less need of comfort, or encounters challenges to the doctrines? And how does this tie in with how the brain operates?

A lot of religion, as it is practiced, serves to increase the emotional importance to the person of identifying as a faithful follower of that religion. It redefines what it is to be a "good" person. It is present at emotional high points in the person's life (marriage, and baptism of new babies). Religious practice often results in the individual spending lots of time with other people of the same faith. This ties their social circles and support networks to their belief, and biases the flow of information going to the person in favour of information that supports their beliefs. It also has a profound emotional effect, because the more someone has sunk into their religious identity and built their life around it, the greater their Escalation of Commitment.

The brain is designed to defend that investment, even to over-riding contradictory external evidence. The ventral striatum (shown here in red) is part of the brain that is strongly associated with emotional and motivational aspects of behavior, and is connected with disturbances such as schizophrenia:

Image

It shows increased activity in adolescents when acting according to peer pressure rather than sense, and it also shows increased activity when believers assert the truth of religious statements (such as "Angels really exist") compared to when they assert the truth of non-religious statements (such as "Eagles really exist"). (link)

This mechanism exists in order to help humans carry out long term plans with determination, rather than getting side-tracked by self-questioning at the first setback, wasting the effort invested so far. However it can be hijacked by certain cognitive biases. There are many believers who say things like:

When I look into the eyes of my beautiful children, I see God. Every flower, bird, rainbow, I see him. Looking around, there has to be a Creator. I don't believe a collision of two stars or whatever it was in the big bang theory could cause the beautiful things in this world. Seeing isn't believing - believing is seeing. I feel God in my soul, I hear him in the pitter patter of the rain. God is as real as the air I breathe. I cannot see it, but its there.

Such people are not liars, crazy or stupid.

No.

What they are is human.

The human brain uses Bayes' Theorem (the correct mathematical way of updating a probability estimate upon receiving a new piece of information). A consequence of this is that how we view evidence depends upon which evidence we've seen so far. In practical terms, what this means is that we have a tendency to carry on believing what we already believe, and downgrade evidence that contradicts our beliefs. This is known as "Confirmation Bias" and is a very important concept so please, if that's not a term you've come across before, please spend 5 minutes reading the brief summary at WikiPedia.

And that's just one cognitive bias. Other relevant ones are Pareidolia, Subjective Validation and Belief Bias. (do read about the fMRI scan experiment carried out on that last one).

The people who look at events in their personal past and declare that they can see in those events clear evidence of a divine plan, or even miracles, are exhibiting precisely the same normal human limitations of how bad we are at estimating certain types of probability as most of the human population (excluding, perhaps, certain very wary and skeptical mathematicians) are all sorts of non-religious situation (link, link, link). People are also bad at estimating how rational or irrational they have been, consistently over-estimating their own rationality (link).

A third brain mechanism some forms of Christianity take advantage of to keep hold of a person is the moral dimension of purity. The sacrament of confession, with the resulting absolution, can give a feeling of cleanliness that is almost addictive (the way someone with OCD repeatedly washes their hands) - and the church is the only available 'pusher'.

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... -wash-away

How do Christian doctrines adapt?

Cults use deception to lure people in, extreme behaviour modification techniques to manipulate them while in, and coercion to dissuade them from leaving. Cults persuade their followers that the cult is the only means of salvation, and the money and effort of the followers is being put to good use, while supporting the cult leaders in a fine lifestyle. (link to "how cults work" http://www.howcultswork.com/)

Most religions are different. The leaders are themselves believers rather than hypocrites. They don't love bomb new members or give them a false impression of what the holy book or being a member is like. They are not over-controlling of members' daily lives and associations. They don't combine intense group events with tiredness or even sleep deprivation to lower rationality. And they don't force followers to shun others who have left the faith.

But they do share a surprising number of basic behaviour modification techniques in common.

Repeated ritualistic public affirmations of belief - catechisms, confirmation ceremonies, spoken creeds
Peer pressure - an emphasis on putting your best face forwards, and testifying giving credit to God
Altered definitions - a lot of time listening to or reading the holy text and explanations of it, building up a private technical vocabulary of words and concepts specific to the religion. They become habituated to the lifestyle.
But the biggest thing Christianity does is to make the follower feel that coming up with reasons for why doctrine is justified is their personal responsibility. They are exposed to multiple 'strains' of interpretation, and encouraged to seek out or develop one that best satisfies their own personal cognitive biases. They are made to feel that a failure to be satisfied is a failing on their part, and a sign of insufficient effort or faith. And so they fill in gaps in the meta model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_model ... _structure) in the same way a subject reads meaning into the Forer text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effe ... onstration).

And the killer doctrine, the one that holds it all together, is that there doesn't need to be any objective evidence that the new interpretation is more accurate than the old interpretation - just it feeling more right is, by itself, all the evidence that is needed. The only bounds are peer pressure, and the follower can always gravitate to a new denomination that better fits the interpretation that feels most natural to them, where they then share interpretations, infecting others and being re-infected themselves with multiple similar strains, reinforcing the truthful feeling ("others believe this, so it is something I discovered rather than made up").

It is this personal adaption that leads, church by church, denomination by denomination, to evolution of the religion as a whole.



How do Christian doctrines spread?

Historically much of the spread of Christianity has happened through politics (the entirely of Sweden was converted when the King was converted), economics (missionaries followed the East India Company into Africa) and the sword (the Conquistadors). However there have always been, and continue to be, many doctrines and practices that contribute to spreading on a personal and church level.

Children are taught to honour their father and their mother. Parents and god parents promise to raise the children in the faith, and are encouraged to bring them along to services and Sunday school. Doctrines connected with staying married, not masturbating, not using contraception and not aborting all lead to larger than average family sizes (link), even when normalised for age, country and income. Followers gain social status from having children who are seen to follow the faith (eg First Communion). The modern extreme of this is the Quiverfull movement which, unsurprisingly, is growing fast.

Doctrines such as the protestant work ethic and prosperity theology lead to men gaining wealth and spreading the faith through marriage and supporting large families. Doctrines which treat women as objects, such as the high value placed upon sexual purity (abstinence and virginity before marriage), and submitting to the man as the head of the household (including on issues of S*x) also affect the spread of the faith. Sexual mores and restrictions tend to be preached about more often than things like cheating on taxes, or driving politely, because those other things have less impact on the spread of the faith.

Interestingly enough, in the early Church, there was a common doctrine of total chastity for everyone (not just monks or priests) and not having children, because it was felt the second coming of Christ was immanent. The theological justifications for this were just as strong as for the alternatives, however the groups following that doctrine eventually all died off, leaving the alternative to spread unopposed. Similarly groups that have preached a vow of poverty have failed to make headway in the general population (because it makes raising families rather hard).

I mentioned earlier that churches tended to encourage followers to invest time and money in the church, because of the emotional impact upon the follower from doing so. But, of course, on a church level that can provide an active church with vast income. And, over generations, that translates to vast wealth and power, all too often invested in grand works of art and extensive (tax free) properties. Here's a church that's 20 minutes drive from my home:

Image



Magnificent, isn't it? A true labour of love, by the craftmen who build it (or, at least, the ones not making gargoyles that looked like the bishop). A lot of labour, in fact. Over the centuries more than 10 million man hours were spent on the construction and decoration. It wasn't just a place of worship. It was a seat of ecclesiastical governance and a statement of power - it says "We're going to be here for ever, we hold eternal truth."

Churches have always lobbied for civil power. In western countries, for most of the last 1500 years, it was a criminal offense punishable by death (or, at minimum, socially very very unwise) to be anything other than a Christian. Church scholars drafted laws for the kings (think of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Richelieu), which gives a 'home court' advantage if you're trying to carry out The Great Commission, and even today there are still very real social advantages to presenting as a Christian in most western countries. Like a fish surrounded by water, this privilege is only noticed when absent - it seems the natural state, because it has been around for so long. Christians do not lack book publishers, TV channels, radio shows, or access to any other channel when they want to proselytise; and doctrine positively encourages this. Indeed, Christian practice includes everything from witnessing on personal blogs and discrete fish bumper stickers to megaphone street preaching and knocking on doors at the weekend. This 'home court' advantage can be so strong that in places like America's Bible Belt many people (who in other areas might describe themselves as agnostic, apathetic or lapsed Christians) will claim the social identity of being a believer out of lazy acceptance, because in that area it is strongly in their self interest to do so (their children are bullied and they can't make friends otherwise).

We can quantify these effects, by looking at a map of the world:

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If religious belief were based upon objective evidence then between people who had equal access to that evidence, we'd expect to see that the fraction of them who accepted or rejected it would not vary from region to region.

However when we look at the map what we see is that, even in places like Europe and the United States, where public libraries in all towns stock books on a wide variety of religions and internet access is readily available, there are large swathes of land where most people share the same religion, and clear boundaries between those swathes - boundaries that have not moved much since large wars or migrations over 200 years ago.

Consider two neighbouring countries in Europe, Greece (98% Christian) and Turkey (98% Muslim). If there is one true religion in the world, supported by objective evidence, then just from straight statistics we can say that less than 5% of the followers of that religion are following it because of that evidence. And that if there is convincing subjective evidence supporting it of a supernatural origin, the God of that religion is not being even handed in which nations He gives that evidence out to.

Or, alternatively, there is no God. It is the simpler explanation for the observed pattern.
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 13

The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective

I'm going to divide the flaws into four top level categories:

1. Failures of consistency
2. Failures of theory
3. Failures of practice
4. Failures of complexity
And then, probably subdivide some of those categories.



1. Failures of consistency

Even if we can't judge one world-view by the values of a different world-view it should, at minimum, live up to its own values. Seen from outside, there appear to be many places that the Bible contradicts itself, reality, common sense or our moral intuition. But contradictions can always be papered over or explained away, if one is allowed a sufficiently complex explanation. The thing I'd like you, as a Christian, to bear in mind as we look at the apparent contradictions in this section is not whether you can come up with an explanation to reconcile each one, but the nature of the explanations. Are they simple explanations that would be immediately obvious with no external prompting to a Christian of even average intelligence, as long as they were familiar with the Bible? Or are they complex explanations, that required thought and ingenuity on someone's part to devise? Are they powerful explanations that, because they correspond to reality on some deep level, explain not just the apparent contradiction at hand, but make further useful predictions and tie in well with other areas? Or do they seem more like ad-hoc explanations, that raise more questions than they answer, that have no predictive power, that are isolated and drive you further away from consensus reality, and that could have many aspects of the explanation varied without altering the dead-end to curiosity that they provide?

Why is this important? Doesn't science have hideously complex explanations? What could be simpler than the Holy Spirit telling us that two passages in the Bible are both correct, and that we don't have to understand how that is the case, just that it is; that the Bible tells us that unbelievers, who don't accept the guidance of the Holy Spirit, will be unable to see; that things are the way they are because that is the will of God, and it is not for us to question; that we should just have faith, and not let Satan into our hearts?

It is important because you are not an unbeliever, and the Bible says that, for believers, the Holy Spirit will not just affirm truth, but will guide even simple people to clear explanations of that truth, with no outside help required. (1 Corinthians 2, 1 Corinthians 10, 1 John 2). "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true" - 2 Tim 3:16. It is whether the explanations of the apparent contradictions are consistent with that, the Bible's own standard, that this category's title refers to.

A) apparent contradictory descriptions of the same physical thing or sequence of events
B) apparent contradictions between attributes, motives, values, rules and actions
C) apparent contradictions between the Bible, prophecies and history
D) apparent contradictions between the Bible and science
E) apparent contradictions between the Christian narrative and common sense


A) apparent contradictory descriptions of the same physical thing or sequence of events

Creation

In (Genesis 1:25-27) God creates non-human animals before humans.
In (Genesis 2:18-19) God creates humans before non-human animals.
The Great Drought

In (1 Kings 18) it lasted less than 36 months.
In (Luke 4:25) it lasted longer than 36 months.
Who did the Egyptians buy Joseph from?

In (Genesis 37:36) it says the Midianites.
In (Genesis 39:1) it says the the Ishmaelites.
Who moved David to take a census?

In (2 Samuel 24:1) it says God.
In (1 Chronicles 21:1) it says Satan.
Was Jesus the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament?

In the Old Testament it says the Messiah will be descended on his father's side from King David (link to a full explanation of why the Jews do not accept Jesus)
In the New Testament it says Jesus was not sired by a human father


B) apparent contradictions between attributes, motives, values, rules and actions

Is it ok to drink wine?

In (Judges 13:4) it says "drink not wine"
In (Proverbs 31:6-7) it says "Give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more."
Is it ever ok to lie?

In (2 Chronicles 18) it says Yes.
In (Matthew 19:18) it says No.
How did Judas feel about betraying Jesus?

In (Matthew 27:5) he felt so bad about it he threw away the money, then hung himself
In (Acts 1:18) he went on a spending spree with the money, then was slain by God


C) apparent contradictions between the Bible, prophecies and history

Were the Twelve Tribes of Israel named after the children of Jacob?

The Bible says: Yes (Genesis 49)
History says: No. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... 20039.html)(http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/tribes.html)
Did Iraq become a perpetual desolation within 70 years?

The Bible says: Yes (Jeremiah 25:12)
History says: No. Even if you interpret "the land of the Chaldeans" as just the city of Babylon, that didn't decline until 275 BCE, 264 years after the conquest of the Chaldeans by the Persians.
Did Jesus return within the lifetime of some of his audience?

The Bible says: Yes (Matthew 16:28) (Luke 9:27) (Mark 13:30-31) (Mark 14:62) (1 John 3:2) (1 John 2:18)
History says: No.
Was Egypt uninhabited for 40 years after being crushed by Nebuchadnezzar?

The Bible says: Yes (Ezekiel 30:10-11)(Ezekiel 29:10-12)
History says: No. (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics ... Carchemish)(http://www.goatstar.org/failed-propheci ... er%20Egypt)
Babel

According to the Bible, before the tower of Babel was cast down (and it wasn't built until 2250 BCE), humans were of a single race and spoke a single language. On casting it down, humanity was split up and scattered to the four corners of the Earth, and multiple languages (and races and cultures) were formed.
However, using dendrochronology, we can date to the precise year timbers in buildings around the world going back more than 4000 years earlier than that, complete with artifacts and buried bodies showing unbroken culture and habitation of those settlements all the way up to the present day. Indeed, given the unbroken timeline from the Old Testament (used by Bishop Ussher) the Great Flood itself must have happened at least 300 years after the first pyramid was built in Egypt without, somehow, interrupting the succession of Pharaohs or the culture of the Egyptians. The timelines are not just different in scale, or fixable with some fudge like treating days as thousands of years; they are hideously incompatible, fixable only by use of explicit miracles (for details compare the religious timeline in part 7 of the FAQ with the scientific timelines in parts 8 and 10).


D) apparent contradictions between the Bible and science

Biology

The Bible says: Unicorns exist and Ostriches are uncaring parents (Job 39:9-16)
Science says: We have no evidence in favour of unicorns existing, and much evidence in favour of Ostriches being attentive parents
The Bible features Satyrs, Giants, Cockatrices, Dragons and talking Demons
Mythology from that region and period also features these things
Science does not feature these things
Science says the human species evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, from previous non-human species
The Bible is often interpreted to say this is not the means God used to create the human species. However this is a really really big issue, so I'll defer dealing with it in detail to later part of this FAQ.
Astronomy

Modern science says the Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun orbits the centre of our galaxy (the Milky Way), etc. and that stars are varying distances from the Earth, with the nearest being 4 light years away.
Ancient science was split on the question. In 230 BCE, a Greek astronomer named Aristarchos came up with the first heliocentric model of the solar system, but most Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians went with the celestial spheres model. Both, though, saw the stars as being at a more or less fixed distance away from the centre of the solar system, leaving a divine space 'the heavens' beyond this shell of stars. Stars could 'fall' from this shell down to Earth (and were much smaller that the Earth) and, similarly, creatures from Heaven would descend in a physical vertical motion from somewhere beyond the sky, past the stars then the clouds, before landing on the Earth (in just the same way that those who died and lived in the underworld were physically downwards beneath the surface of the Earth). (link)(link)(link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almagest#P ... tary_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
The Bible uses a model that is compatible with the scientific knowledge of their time, showing physical vertical movement from the Earth to the Heaven where God lives in many places, stars falling, and even the Sun being held still for several hours in order to aid a battle. For example: (Matthew 24:29) (Genesis 11:4-7)
Geology

Science says the Earth is billions of years old, and never suffered a world-wide flood deep enough to cover the tops of the tallest mountains on Earth
The Bible says otherwise
Physics

The Bible lists many miracles that contradict the known laws of physics
Science has found no evidence that miracles can take place


E) apparent contradictions between the Christian narrative and common sense

Jesus rides two donkeys at the same time

In {Zechariah 9:9} it is predicted the Messiah will enter Jerusalem riding "upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass". The literal interpretation of this is two different animals. However, if you are familiar with the usage of the period in which that was written, that construct is better translated to mean "just upon an ass, even such an ass as was a colt, the foal of an ass" (ie one animal).
In {Matthew 21:1-7} the author mistranslates the earlier scripture and, to fulfill the prophecy, invents and describes in detail the ludicrous scene of Jesus riding two donkeys at the same time.
Continued in the next part:

i) Choice of miracles
ii) Divine Hiddenness
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 14
1. Failures of consistency (continued)

There are two last failures of consistency I want to address, before I go onto the questions of 'good and 'evil', and I've split them off into their own FAQ part, so I can go into the detail they deserve:

i) Choice of miracles
ii) Divine Hiddenness


i) Choice of miracles

The English word "miracle" can refer to a number of things. In the New Testament the authors talk about signs and wonders (Semeion and Terata) and about mighty works (Erga and Dunameis), and these can be effects caused either directly by God, or indirectly via a secondary agency. They are often categorised by type of effect into miracles of creation and miracles of providence. Creation of matter (eg the universe), creation of force (eg walking on water) and massive alteration of biological life (eg allowing Balaam's Ass to speak) all count as miracles of creation - things which contravene our current understanding of the laws of nature. Unusual plagues, weather, disasters, animal behaviour and healing all count as miracles of providence - things that don't contravene the laws of nature but which would (without a guiding force behind them) require unbelievably high coincidences of timing, target selection or magnitude. Which is not unreasonable. If something wasn't impossible or, at minimum, highly unlikely, how would you know it to be a miracle?

http://www.bj005a3881.pwp.blueyonder.co ... acles.html
http://christianity.about.com/od/biblef ... -Jesus.htm
http://www.miraclesofthesaints.com/


However, given all of the things that an omnipotent power might have chosen to do, that break natural laws, or the mathematical laws of probability, why did He choose the particular things he did choose to do, at those particular times? Have a look at the miracles of the Old Testament, the miracles of the New Testament, and the miracles of the Saints. Then compare the magnitude of effect of each event, with how long ago it was claimed to happen.

Why are so many of them the type of effect that can be duplicated by modern confidence tricksters and stage magicians, or by claiming credit after the event for something that happened by chance? And why is it that, the closer we get to modern times (when there are independant witnesses who could call foul on made up claims), the weaker and more ambiguous the miracles become. No more parting of seas or bodily sweeping people up into the clouds. No more destroying cities in fire.

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There's a whole website dedicated to examining just this one specific question in detail:

Why won't God heal amputees?
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm

It is a good question. Why, out of all the types of healing ascribed to miraculous divine power, are none of them unambiguous miracles of creation like re-growing an entire amputated leg. Why are they all restricted to being miracles of providence?



ii) Divine Hiddenness

500 years ago, Divine Hiddenness wasn't an issue. It didn't get listed in any of the great religious debates, it just wasn't a question anyone raised. If asked whether there was evidence of God, a priest would point at God's Works (the erga): the stars in the sky, the sun rising in the morning, the animals grazing in the fields, the tides of the sea, and say "You can't explain any of that. Those things are obviously all the work of God. Who else?"

But since then, bit by bit, science has started to explain the things we see around us. And, slowly, the percentage of atheists in the world is increasing. So why has God allowed this non-belief to spread? Why isn't He providing evidence that these atheists find more persuasive?

Here's how Richard Carrier puts the argument from the existence of non-belief:

It is a direct contradiction to claim that someone is loving yet never does what a loving person does--because the name refers to the behavior. To be loving literally means to be loving. You can't be heartless and claim to be loving. As Christ himself is supposed to have said, "it is by their fruits that shall ye know them." The only possible exception here is when a loving person is incapable of acting as he desires--either lacking the ability or facing too great a risk to himself or others--but this exception never applies to a God, who is all-powerful and immune to all harm.

Just look at what Christians are saying. They routinely claim that God is your father and best friend. Yet if that were true, we would observe all the same behaviors from God that we observe from our fathers and friends. But we don't observe this. Therefore, there is no God who is our father or our friend. The logic of this is truly unassailable, and no "free will" excuse can escape it. For my father and friends aren't violating my free will when they speak to me, help me, give me advice, and answer my questions. Therefore, God would not violate my free will if he did so. He must be able to do at least as much as they do, even if for some reason he couldn't do more. But God doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't talk to, teach, help, or comfort us, unlike my real father and my real friends. God doesn't tell us when we hold a mistaken belief that shall hurt us. But my father does, and my friends do. Therefore, no God exists who is even remotely like my father or my friends, or anyone at all who loves me. Therefore, Christianity is false.



So is Carrier right? Are there things God could do, that He isn't doing, which would persuade far more atheists that God exists than are currently persuaded?

If you ask Atheists "What could God do tomorrow that would change your mind and make you at least 95% certain that God exists?" you get a wide variety of answers (from moving Mount Everest to the sea just off New York, to appearing during the superbowl and changing everybody's nachos to live salmon), some sillier than others. But the point is that you do get answers. So, given that there are things God could do in order to change the minds of Atheists without violating their free will, why hasn't He?

And it isn't just vast physical acts. Why do so many of the prophecies in the Bible contain the same sort of ambiguity found in the prophecies of Nostradamus? If God could forsee the modern world, and He wanted us to believe, why doesn't the Bible contain precise predictions such as "In September 2006, light from a supernova in the direction of the Perseus constellation will arrive at the Earth"? Why no prime factors of large numbers? Why no useful advice about the effects of burning fossil fuels upon the environment?

One answer to this question that's sometimes offered is that God refuses to give certain proof of His existence in order to test humanity's faith. This theory of "Divine Hiddenness" is a new idea, suggested only since the advent of modern science, but it has an unexpected consequence.

Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:

Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, a priest who heard the confessions of condemned witches, wrote in 1631 the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in which he bitingly described the decision tree for condemning accused witches: If the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away.

Spee acted as confessor to many witches; he was thus in a position to observe every branch of the accusation tree, that no matter what the accused witch said or did, it was held a proof against her. In any individual case, you would only hear one branch of the dilemma. It is for this reason that scientists write down their experimental predictions in advance.

But you can't have it both ways—as a matter of probability theory, not mere fairness. The rule that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" is a special case of a more general law, which I would name Conservation of Expected Evidence: The expectation of the posterior probability, after viewing the evidence, must equal the prior probability.

So if you claim that "no sabotage" is evidence for the existence of a Japanese-American Fifth Column, you must conversely hold that seeing sabotage would argue against a Fifth Column. If you claim that "a good and proper life" is evidence that a woman is a witch, then an evil and improper life must be evidence that she is not a witch. If you argue that God, to test humanity's faith, refuses to reveal His existence, then the miracles described in the Bible must argue against the existence of God.



Once science started explaining some of the 'divine works' previously held up as evidence of God's existence, the initial reaction by believers was to appeal to God as the cause for those phenomena human knowledge had not yet explained. When science filled in a particular gap in our knowledge, the believers just jumped to pointing at the next unfilled gap. Which tactic worked fine while there were plenty of gaps. However, by 1894, some believers noticed that the number of gaps were shrinking alarmingly and that, by basing their argument for God on this type of support, their support shrank over time as science grew. Henry Drummond, a Scottish Christian evangelical writer, argued against the tactic, naming it "God of the Gaps". But, despite that, it is still a popular tactic even today, for good reason. Because, if there is not obvious physical evidence out there shouting "God exists", it raises the question "Why isn't there?". Jesus tells his followers to go spread the message. One of the 10 commandments is to believe in God. It seems to contradict God's declared desire (that worship of him spread) that He Himself is trying to hide away all evidence of His own existence.

Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HooeZrC76s0




And here's a longer piece on it, from the BBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBhm4zv0f7w





Further info: (link) (link) (link) (link)
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
http://www.theopedia.com/God_of_the_Gaps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... elief.html

There seem to be three approaches to Divine Hiddenness.

The first is the hopeful approach, the God of the Gaps. God has given us more persuasive evidence, we just don't recognise it yet. This says "Well, maybe you can explains the tides and the origin of species, but maybe the next gap I point out will be the one that will be forever unexplainable by science."

The second is the approach that anticipates failure. God hasn't given us more persuasive evidence, because He doesn't want to (for some mysterious reason). This argues there will never be evidence and makes up excuses in advance of the test taking place. Carl Sagan wrote about "The Dragon In My Garage".
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Yudkowsky added to it:

A man who comes to us and claims: "There is a dragon in my garage." Fascinating! We reply that we wish to see this dragon—let us set out at once for the garage! "But wait," the claimant says to us, "it is an invisible dragon."

Now as Sagan points out, this doesn't make the hypothesis unfalsifiable. Perhaps we go to the claimant's garage, and although we see no dragon, we hear heavy breathing from no visible source; footprints mysteriously appear on the ground; and instruments show that something in the garage is consuming oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.

But now suppose that we say to the claimant, "Okay, we'll visit the garage and see if we can hear heavy breathing," and the claimant quickly says no, it's an inaudible dragon. We propose to measure carbon dioxide in the air, and the claimant says the dragon does not breathe. We propose to toss a bag of flour into the air to see if it outlines an invisible dragon, and the claimant immediately says, "The dragon is permeable to flour."

Carl Sagan used this parable to illustrate the classic moral that poor hypotheses need to do fast footwork to avoid falsification. But I tell this parable to make a different point: The claimant must have an accurate model of the situation somewhere in his mind, because he can anticipate, in advance, exactly which experimental results he'll need to excuse.



The third approach is the simplest explanation. God hasn't given us more persuasive evidence, because He doesn't exist.
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 15

The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective, continued...

2. Failures of theory


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There was an arcade game popular in the 1970s called "Whac-a-Mole". The player stood in front of several holes, and out of one hole stood a mole. The player had a mallet, and it was easy to whack a mole back into its hole. But, when you did, another mole immediately popped up. It was physically impossible to keep all the moles down at the same time. And, because it was random which of the holes the mole would pop up in, unless a spectator kept careful track, it would be very difficult to tell whether every single mole had been defeated at least once.

Discussing the problem of evil can be rather like playing Wack-a-mole, unless you are very systematic and keep track of every variation, so I apologise in advance if the next bit seems overly legalistic or mathematical. But we are tilting at giants here - the problem of evil is so complex that there's an entire branch of Christian theology (called "theodicy") dedicated to dealing with this one question.

The basic problem can be simply put:

Benevolent parents care about their children. They care whether the children are happy, and they also care about protecting the children too much - children need to have some freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, and learn to take responsibility for them, if they are to grow up and live their own lives.

There are different parenting styles, and some parents are more protective than others. It can sometimes be difficult to judge if another parent is a good parent, especially if that other parent knows more than you do about challenges their child will have to face when grown up.

But, at the end of the day, there are some examples of bad parenting that are pretty clear cut. If a parent has ten children, gives them each a phone and says "call me if you need help", then steps back and watches over the fence while three of the children cut each other to pieces with chainsaws, and two of them accidently stab themselves because the parent left the garden full of knives, and bleed to death in hideous pain; then few people would hesitate to say that isn't good parenting. Not if the parent was watching over the fence, and had time to intervene, and the power to intervene, but didn't. Sure, the children who didn't use their phone are foolish, and the parent's feelings might be hurt by the implied rejection, but is that a good enough reason to condemn so many to painful avoidable death?

So that's the problem that's faced theologians through the ages:

If there's a God who is both powerful and benevolent, then why do we still see around us so many actions and events that seem to be the sort of things a powerful and benevolent being would and could do something about?

and they have come up with many many different potential answers to it.



Some of the potential answers justify the situation in term of limitations on what it is possible that even a divine being could do. Some argue that besides being benevolent God also just, and the situation see seem is the result of a perfect balance between these two attributes - in other words, humanity deserves it. Some argue there are other factors still hidden from us that in fact make everything ok, and we should just trust and go with the flow. Some argue that anything is ok if God does it, because he made us and gets to define what "Good" is, and what would be evil for a human parent to do might be being defined by God as being good for God to do.

These defences raise many questions. What actually are good and evil? Are they absolute or relative? What is justice and what parts do sacrifice and atonement play in it?

Think of the mole as representing God's culpability. Each defence is a potential hole through which the mole can escape through, and only by systematically blocking all of them can that culpability be firmly pinned where it belongs. Blocking every hole is impossible in the original arcade game, and so it feels like I'm attempting the impossible here, to show that every defence of evil existing on Earth is flawed, and none of them leave intact a viable being consistent with Christianity existing, who is both the creator of the entire universe, and worthy of being worshipped.

But that's the aim of this section of the FAQ - to demonstrate that Christianity is flawed not just in practice, but in theory. The whole idea of a supremely powerful and benevolent being is just plain incompatible with the evidence of cruelty and random natural destruction we see around us.

Let the defences and mole whacking begin...



2.1.1 Defence: God created everything, including the concept of what "Good" means. By definition, good is doing what God wants you to do. It is meaningless to doubt whether God is good, because without him there is no absolute standard to give the word something to refer to.

Let's start off by trying to construct an example of action that, as universally as possible, is seen as being evil.

Suppose Olive is a 6 month old baby girl, and Michael is a 40 year old man. If Michael kills Olive, we'd generally see that as bad. But everyone has to die sometime, and perhaps it was an accident, so let's add in that he isn't stupid, sick or being forced at gun point. He deliberate kills her in a way that that involves extreme pain for several hours. Perhaps he was a doctor trying to save her life and, after hours of failed surgery, put her out of her misery? Then let's specify that his actions were in no way to her benefit or thought to be in her benefit. He chucks her into a fire then stands back to watch her burn and, after she crawls out, slowly die in agony from the burns, fully intending when he chucked her into the fire that this would happen.

For want of a better example, let's call that an example of an "evil" action.

But suppose he was doing it, not for her benefit, but for the benefit of others? That by doing so he could save 10 other children from a similar fate, or cause rain to come thus causing great happiness to millions?

If we now specify that the "evil" wasn't a just action (the child didn't deserve that fate) and that it wasn't done to prevent greater evil, or to allow a greater good, then we can term it a "gratuitous evil".

That tells us what we, as humans, commonly see as being evil, but it doesn't tell us why that action is evil. Might a different sentient alien species or a human society in a different universe come to a different conclusion? Could God, if He chose, alter the definition of "evil", such that gratuitously torturing babies became a good thing, that all right-thinking moral humans should willingly do? This is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, after a line by Plato which he attributes to Socrates, where Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

If God declared that the scent of burning baby was sweet to Him, and commanded human sacrifice, should we obey, if he also made clear that the only 'greater' good being achieved by this was to please Him or convince Him that the sender of a request message was sincere by the cost paid in trade?

Principle IV from the Nüremberg Tribunal states:

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Further more why would someone be obligated to follow God's commands? Mere commands do not create obligations unless the commander has some commanding authority. But this commanding authority cannot itself be based on those very commands (i.e., a command to obey one's own commands), otherwise a vicious circle results. So, in order for God's commands to obligate us, He would have to derive His commanding authority from some source other than His own will.

So pure obedience isn't an excuse, but this wasn't an academic question for our ancestors. In previous parts of this FAQ we detailed how the power of blood and sacrifice is a natural concept for humans, because of magic thinking. It has a logic that appeals, and ancient religions in many parts of the world have included the blood sacrifice of animals and humans; generally the best and healthiest, not the lame or dying. If your local deity isn't benevolent, so much as a force of nature with its own rules, a power you have no choice but to make deals with in order to survive, then the "no alternative moral choice" part of the Nüremberg definition comes into play. If you wanted something small, a chicken or dove might do. A larger favour might require a large and perfect animal such as a pure white bull, or an unwanted human slave. A great favour might require a beloved child. At the top end, the only worthy sacrifice was royal blood, even the reigning monarch himself (poor King Domalde, for example). There's no numerical comparison possible. The monarch wasn't allowed to substitute in 1000 slaves for himself. It is about blood as an alchemical reagent, the pain, the emotion, the symbolism involved. Like calls to like, and so forth. It models the deity involved like a powerful neighbour who can be propitiated by gifts of gold and concubines. Indeed, if you look at the Salic laws of Weregild, there are strong parallels.

Is that sort of deity worthy of worship? You might worship Him for pragmatic reasons, or even from some abused Stockholm-syndrome gratitude for personally having escaped the worst the world can throw at one. But He isn't worthy, not unless you are the sort of person who worships powerful people because you admire power itself.

Is it just a matter of allegiance? Who has the bigger stick, heaven or hell? Even most Christian apologists dislike this defence. As C. S. Lewis puts it:

If good is to be defined as what God commands, then the goodness of God Himself is emptied of meaning and the commands of an omnipotent fiend would have the same claim on us as those of the 'righteous Lord.'

So, onto the next mole...
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 16

The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective, continued...

2. Failures of theory, continued...

2.1.2 Defence: Even if God were not 100% good, He would still be worthy of worship. We rightfully praise and follow the examples of heros who are human, despite their having a few flaws. God created us, created the whole universe - that's better than anything any human hero has ever done.

In Norse mythology, Odin created the world as best he could from the materials he had to hand - the body of a giant he'd slain. He didn't work unopposed - there were other giants and gods who, while less powerful than Odin, he couldn't slay them at will without bringing on a preordained catastrophe. And, while definitely powerful, good and heroic, he had several personality flaws (a taste for deceit and violence) which would stop him being categorised as 100% good.

If Odin was good enough for the Norse to worship, why shouldn't the Yahweh of Christianity be deserving of worship even if he set a less than perfect example during the Old Testament years? Shouldn't He be judged by what he is now, post-Jesus, rather than by what he was then?



This is a moot question, because that's not the situation described by Christianity. According to theology, Yahweh is the sole creator of the entire universe, unconstrained by anything other than his own imagination and desire to be consistent with his own nature. According to theology, if there are supernatural powers of evil (eg the devil), they have no power except that permitted by God or permitted by those with the free will to allow the devil's influence in.

So, if we accept the world at face value, how heroic should we judge the deity with total control over it, if we leave aside questions of free will to future defences that concentrate on that?

Well, to start with, the natural world is full of things that are not just painful ("red in tooth and claw"), but that are cruel by design.

For a start there's this species of wasp in Australia that attacks spiders:

Image

Only it doesn't immediately kill them. It paralyses them (the food stays fresh longer, if alive), and then injects the spider with eggs which then hatch and eat the spider alive, from the inside. While the spider is still conscious.

How much effort would it have taken a God, powerful enough to create the entire universe, to just slightly alter the venom the wasp evolved, so that the spider as well as being paralysed would also lose consciousness?



Then there are the painful fatal hereditary diseases that attack children. Alexander disease is incurable. It usually starts at around the age of 3 and kills within 10 years of starting. It causes the affected person to slowly begin to lose body function and eventually the ability to talk, and one of the symptoms are painful seizures. How little would someone have to care about humanity to not fix that if they could? You wouldn't even need to redesign biology or how humans work - just replace the mutated version of chromosome 17q21 in the gene pool, with the unmutated version.



And how about the physical world? You could argue that earthquake, volcanos and tidal waves are an integral part of the planet Earth's design, and without active vulcanism it would have cooled too quickly before life could evolve. But what about meteors, like the one that recently hit Chelyabinsk in Russia? Either you have to believe in a God who set the clockwork running on day 1, and who doesn't physically intervene (which contradicts what the Bible claims, because that has plenty of miraculous physical interventions) OR you have to accept that God could sweep the space lines clear every 100 years, but can't be bothered or does a poor job at it. Can you really worship a deity who is less heroic than a future version of NASA armed with big space lasers?



Maybe there is an excuse for God's apparent behaviour in one of the other defences, but just saying that he's less than perfect doesn't cut it, if we want to maintain that He is the supreme being, the sole creator of the universe, not just one deity among many, opposed by evil Gods or forces nearly as powerful as He is.

If you have that much power, you'd have to be worse than Donald Trump to not use it, unless there's some other mysterious reason not to.

Next mole...



2.1.3 Defence: So maybe he doesn't have that much power. Maybe the tales handed down in the Bible, or deduced by theologians, exaggerate what He can do. Like the Wizard of Oz, he is good, but not all powerful.



Suppose Yahweh is only the creator of our universe, and there are hierarchies above him, imposing constraints upon him that we are unaware of. Suppose he is required to give Satan some access to our world, to twist it and make things less perfect. Suppose some court above Yahweh ruled upon what punishment Eve's sin merited, and He is not allowed to make childbirth safe and painless, or increase our lifespans, or splash a message across the moon in 1000 mile high firey letters announcing His existence and what exactly people need to do in order to get into heaven. Suppose there is some law or logic or reality which says "this is how the magic of sacrifice works, and Jesus has to be killed before you can forgive them", that Yahweh can't fight? Possibly some law that Yahweh himself wrote, without thinking about the consequences, that he can't change because that isn't in his nature?

Well, firstly there's no evidence of these constraints in the Bible, other than those we can deduce from evil existing and God not having done more about it. We can make up as many stories we like about how things might be worse for us in an alternative universe without his intervention.

But precisely the same argument could be used to justify anything, even the depredations of the worst of tyrants.

And, secondly, it is rather similar to the situation in Japan or China, where you have local Kami (spirits) to appease and plead for aid from, who notice humans, but above them is whole bureaucracy of heaven, with many tiers of Gods, at increasing levels of abstraction and lack of caring about the everyday problems of mortals.

It leaves one wondering who is the actual being owed gratitude to for our existence? Is it the nice local one, Yahweh, or is it the one above Him who ordered us created, and set the constraints within which He is allowed to work?

We might, for pragmatic reasons, want to worship Yahweh, if the great being above Yahweh has ordered Yahweh to punish anyone who doesn't worship. But that's not the same as Yahweh being worthy. And how good could Yahweh really be, if he is freely obeying orders to allow all the avoidable pain and misery we see about us on the planet Earth? Should he have consented to allow the creation of the world in the first place, if he knows in advance that the majority will be condemned eternally to a fiery lake?

Either the Bible is lying to us about hell and our chances of ending up there, or the version of Yahweh this defence insists upon is little better than a trustee prisoner, collaborating with cruel prison owners in return for a chance to spare a few prisoners from being whipped.



Let's look at the central mystery of Christianity: the Atonement

According to most denominations, Jesus won salvation for humanity by the atonement (his shedding his blood on the cross - his living as a human and willingly dying) which reconciled humanity with Yahweh and redeemed their sins.

There are disagreements over which bits were important (his teachings or his dying) and what the mechanism was (a ransom or an example), but they all agree that it was necessary in order to gain something important from Yahweh (his mercy, or a place in heaven, or his love, or justice, or something), and that this important thing could have been gained in no other way (or in no other way consistent with God's love and nature). Theologians talk about it being a sacrifice on Jesus' part. He suffered and, by doing so, won a victory of some kind - did something great and magnificent we should all be supremely grateful for, the ultimate 'good' action.

Why? Why that constraint? What's the story logic behind it?



That substitutionary blood sacrific is just a universal constraint of how justice in the universe works, that even God must bow to, might make sense 2000 years ago, when the Roman empire was in full swing and sacrificial offerings were common. But what ethical being today would freely choose that as a fundamental rule of how a universe should work, if they have a free choice in the matter?

Back then it might make sense to excuse God's actions as necessary, sacrificing his own son because no other was pure and powerful enough to do. But who was he offering that sacrifice to?

And if it wasn't necessary, If God freely chose for things to work that way, in foreknowledge of what sacrifice would be necessary, then how meaningful was it? It becomes a play put on for our benefit, a painful boxing match that the event organiser could have replaced by a ballet, but thought the boxing more dramatically appropriate. Are those the actions of a kindly Wizard of Oz? Or of a P. T. Barnum?



God being under constraints (whether external or internal) doesn't work as an excuse for the evil we apparently see around us. There needs to be something else, some other defence, if it is to retain any connection to Christianity and not be just a made up story - an excuse based solely upon the fact that we do see evil.

Next mole...
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 17

The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective, continued...

2. Failures of theory, continued...

2.1.4 Defence: So maybe there is an absolute definition of good that doesn't rely upon God, and God is 100% good, but we just are not smart or knowledgeable enough to fully understand not just whether a particular choice was good, but to understand what the highest idea of good is.

There are many different systems of ethics in the world, however some understanding can be gained by looking at the types of reasoning that lie beneath them, that develop through predictable stages as people's brains alter with the change from child to adult:

Image

Lawrence Kohlberg tied these stages into the type of logical reasoning and theory of mind children had at different ages (the work of Piaget and others):

Progress through Kohlberg's stages happens as a result of the individual's increasing competence, both psychologically and in balancing conflicting social-value claims. The process of resolving conflicting claims to reach an equilibrium is called "justice operation". Kohlberg identifies two of these justice operations: "equality," which involves an impartial regard for persons, and "reciprocity," which means a regard for the role of personal merit. For Kohlberg, the most adequate result of both operations is "reversibility," in which a moral or dutiful act within a particular situation is evaluated in terms of whether or not the act would be satisfactory even if particular persons were to switch roles within that situation (also known colloquially as "moral musical chairs").

Knowledge and learning contribute to moral development. Specifically important are the individual's "view of persons" and their "social perspective level", each of which becomes more complex and mature with each advancing stage. The "view of persons" can be understood as the individual's grasp of the psychology of other persons; it may be pictured as a spectrum, with stage one having no view of other persons at all, and stage six being entirely sociocentric. Similarly, the social perspective level involves the understanding of the social universe, differing from the view of persons in that it involves an appreciation of social norms. (source)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_K ... l_elements

So what if there is a stage 7? What if there is some higher moral principle that God is following, that is as mysterious to us as a painful jab in the arm is mysterious to a child who doesn't realise the doctor is doing it for a good reason.

Let's look at some of the actions, described in the Bible, that this mysterious 7th stage would have to be sufficient to classify as good, and see if there is any element of predictability left to us, or if it appears so arbitrary to us that all our current moral intuitions become worthless.

Richard Dawkins claims:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

and there are whole websites dedicated to listing such incidents in the bible: eg rape and misogyny

http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html

but perhaps such sites are biased and quote things out of context? Perhaps they exaggerate, or don't mentioned which attitudes were perfectly normal for those times?

What are the apparent crimes, that must be justified if this particular defence is to succeed?

I'll pick just two. Firstly the Deluge:

Genesis 7:21-23
King James Version (KJV)

21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

Not a lot of ambiguity in that description. God did it with his own hand, drowning billions of cute baby puppies, kittens, and other innocent animals. Even ones on continents that humans had not yet spread to. When he could have just as easily sent a plague to wipe out only the humans.



Second, the genocides, such as:

1 Samuel 15:2-3
King James Version (KJV)

2 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

I've heard attempts to justify this using conventional morality, by claiming that ALL the animals in the entire nation were defiled by bestiality and could never live normal happy lives, or that there were insufficient child care facilities in a desert to look after the toddlers of the slain adults, and it was a mercy to use a sword rather than to let the die of thirst in a desert.

This is from the all powerful deity who created the universe? He couldn't send an unexpected rain cloud, or fix the animals?



And, if we expand beyond the events recorded in the Bible, we'd still also need to explain the morality of allowing natural evils (such as meteors, wasps, and cruel illnesses) and human-influenced evils (such as serial killings by people born psychopaths, or just people maimed for life by drunk drivers). God created things perfect, but then they deteriated after Eve sinned, and God couldn't change things back without hurting free will? That's a different defence - here we're just interested in whether such things can be excused by claiming that these things are actually good, and we're just too dumb to understand what 'good' really is.



Ok, so that's the challenge. Is it plausible that there is some advanced version of morality which, just by itself, is sufficient to make such things seem good? We're not in a position to say that's impossible. But there are a number of unpleasant consequences of such a defence.

Firstly, such hidden knowledge directly contradicts the claims made in the Bible that it is possible to tell good from evil ("by their fruits ye shall know them"), and that we can understand and do right.

And secondly, the explanantion is entirely ad hoc - it has no predictive power at all. Given a situation in the Bible, you can't predict beforehand what God's response will be based on the premise of Him being good in an incomprehensible way - it robs us of the moral predictability.

Consider these two paintings:

Image

One of them was done by a respected artist. The other was done by a monkey. Can you tell which is which?

As it turns out, even in abstract art, there is still an element of artistic predictability, lay audiences guess which was done by the artist more than 50% of the time. (link)

But if you can't tell the difference between an order issued by a good deity, and one issued by a selfish war deity, is there any meaning left in saying that the deity is setting a moral example? It returns us to the issue of "Divine Hiddenness". Even a chainsaw wielding sociopath does good things occasionally. How do you tell the difference?

And, if you can't, why is He worthy of your worship? Because He claims to be?

Next mo.. actually, before we get onto the next mole, a quick aside to answer yet another question that is frequently asked of Atheists:



Well, if you don't accept our explanation of what evil is, how does Atheism explain it? Why haven't we evolved to be always happy? Why do humans do nasty things to other humans, even at cost to themselves?

Saying evolution 'cares' about something is to mistakenly cast it as a being with feelings but, to make the wording easier, let's take 'caring' in this context to mean "is concerned with" in the same way that the equation determining the period of the swing of a pendulum is concerned with the length of the pendulum, but isn't concerned with the colour of the pendulum.

Evolution cares about the survival of genes. It doesn't care about the survival of individual creatures, except in as far as that affects the survival of their genes. If a creature has already mated and is now too old to mate again, and can't do anything more to affect the survival of its offspring, as far as evolution is concerned, that creature might as well curl up and die, to stop using up food the offspring might one day make use of. For example, after mating the male dark fishing spider just curls up and dies within a few hours - his purpose is over.

And evolution certainly doesn't care about whether individual creatures are happy or unhappy, in pain or feeling pleasure, active or depressed, except in as far as those states and emotions have utility, are useful on average for the purpose of keeping the creature alive or spreading its genes.

Pleasure and pain are evolution's carrot and stick - tools used to punish and reward the creature, to manipulate it into following the behaviour that evolution cares about. It isn't a perfect system - it paints with broad brush strokes. So damage to the body is painful, even in circumstances where that's necessary for the body to survive. And it can be 'gamed'. So orgasm is pleasurable, even when it comes from masturbation or when using a condom, with little chance of children resulting.

But in general we can use this model of what pleasure and pain are for to make predictions of what sort of activities will be pleasurable or painful, and (particularly for mammals with simple enough brains not to get confused by things like guilt or shame) these predictions have a good track record for accuracy.

For those interested, there's a paper about this:

Natural Selection and the Problem of Evil (2007), by Paul Draper

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... /evil.html

and discussion of that paper, online.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... asure.html

As to the nature of evil, when it comes to whether individual people are 'good' or 'evil', it turns out that this often depends upon context. Research has been done showing that it is possible to deliberately set up a situation where 90% of people (normal everyday people, not psychopaths) will carry out significantly evil actions (such as painfully electrocuting an innocent person, to the point of death), with no physical coercion, threats or legal penalties - just social pressure.

The following video is by Phil Zimbardo, who ran the original Stanford Prison experiment, and who was called in as the expert witness over the Abu Ghraib abuses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAy50f-gWc


(LINK to complete series - note, there are photos shown in part 2, with advanced warning, that are not safe for work or children.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAy50f- ... redirect=1

Again, this model of what evil is differs from that offered by religion, in that it has predictive power, that has been systematically scientifically confirmed.



Ok, now onto the next mole...
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Answer to Questions about Atheism asked Frequently on CafeMom, by Clairwil - part 18

The flaws of modern Christianity, from an Atheist perspective, continued...

2. Failures of theory, continued...

2.1.5 Defence: So maybe there is an absolute definition of good that doesn't rely upon God, and God is 100% good, and we do understand what good is, but we're missing vital information about the consequences of His choices, that would be needed in order to judge whether God's choices are good

This is known as the Unknown Purpose Defence (UPD), and it is a big one, because there are many different types of information we might be missing.

A famous chain email claims:

" Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light. "

(This is based upon the theology of St Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, which is very mainstream.) http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/ar ... vil-exist/

One variant of that is to say that God has taken no evil actions because, once we know the full circumstances, we'll realise that we live in the best of the possible alternatives He could have picked between.

For example, here's one person's testimony praising God for picking an alternative where they were badly injured, rather than an alternative where they died:
http://christianity.about.com/u/ua/test ... sstory.htm
How God Saved Me
On Nov. 29, 2011, I was crushed in an accident. I died at the scene and during surgery. Today I am recovering from the accident. I had my small intestine removed, part of my colon and bowel, and my pelvis was broken and shattered along with intensive nerve damage to my right leg. They didn't expect me to live as I was induced to a coma for five days. When I came to, I had a breathing tube and a feeding tube. My pelvis wasn't surgically repaired, as they were waiting until the internal organs were healed enough. God and his angels were watching over me during this time as God watches over us every day. It has been a hard road towards recovery and healing, but God is the great physician. God has a plan for me, and this is why I didn't die on that Tuesday, November 29, 2011. God is good.

Some go further, and claim that life would be pointless, that we could have no appreciation of the value of Good, unless we had also experienced Evil and so could understand the contrast. In other words, this is a utilitarian argument - the temporary pain and apparent injustice of our lives in this world is justifed by the resulting greater good consequences in the afterlife.

William Lane Craig states the Unknown Purpose Defence thus:

We aren't in a good position to assess with confidence the probability (or improbability) of whether God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting bad things. Suffering that appears utterly pointless within our limited framework may be seen to be justly permitted in God's wider framework. The brutal murder of a child may have a ripple effect through history such that God's reason for not preventing the evil may emerge only centuries later or in another country. (Dallas Morning News, June 13, 1998)

According to Craig, then, we have no grounds for saying that it is probable or improbable that God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting evil, and so we have no grounds for saying that evils are gratuitous just because they appear so to us.

There are numerous variants of this defence, each with a different aspect of fate or divine mechanics that's mysterious to mere humans, that might explain the appearance of gratuitous evil in the world, IF it were true. For instance, John Hick suggests that suffering is necessary to grow souls, so the more we suffer now, the greater we'll be in the afterlife.

It is impossible to disprove such explanations, however we need to note a number of characteristics of them, harking back to discussion of explanatory power in part 6 of this FAQ.

Firstly, they are ad-hoc. They are constructed in order to explain evil.

Secondly, they have no predictive power. For example, you can't reason from prior suffering being necessary to have a fun experience of the afterlife to anything else, such as how we would then expect suffering to be distributed between people. What did innocent babies who die young do to annoy God, that he robbed them of a full lifespan of suffering and so condemned them to a tepid worthless experience of heaven?

Thirdly, most parts of the explanation are interchangeable, without altering anything substantial. So, for instance, we could say God is perfectly just, and needs wrong doing in order to have a chance to exhibit that justice by judging wrong doers. But we could equally well say that God is perfectly merciful, and needs wrong doers to exist in order to exhibit his mercy by sending them all to heaven anyway. Or that he is a perfect bureaucrat, and needs wrong doers to exist in order to be able to exhibit his full master of complex red tape and forms for tracking their wrong doings.

Fourthly, precisely the same types of argument based upon stuff we don't know could be used to argue that God is evil and to explain the existence of good in the world:

If God is perfectly evil, how then can we explain that there appear to be good things in world? God is great beyond our understanding, so it is unsurprising that we don't yet realise how everything we appear to see is actually part of his plan that will result in the maximum possible pain and suffering, but here are some elements of the plan. Rather than kill off humanity, he wants lots of population, and to give them time to be tempted and fall, so that more souls will end up in torment in hell. He allowed beautiful things to exist, in order that we realise how ugly the ugly things are, and allows some happy wealthy people to exist, in order that others feel more the depths of their suffering in sickness and poverty. He gave up free will, risking that we'd do some good acts (which he hates), because it allows us to be morally responsible for evil acts (which he loves). He could have made us into puppets that only do evil, but then he would not have the pleasure of seeing us choose evil. To maximize evil, evil god designed us so that we can perform evil acts from our own will. Nothing good exists, except that it enables the existence of second order evils (for example, there could be no true depths of jealousy without love). (link)http://www.cafemom.com/group/117342/for ... ure_of_God (site now dead)

Similarly, we don't know that the ripple effect through history of Craig's "brutal murder of a child" will be good rather than bad. Given what we know of the effects of previous murders, if we were betting, we'd have to say the odds are that, on average, violence begets fear and hatred, which then beget more violence.

Nor have we any basis to think that God was somehow forced to choose only between two alternative universes for the car crash victim: one where the victim died, and one where they were permanently maimed. One can always imagine something worse, but what of all the possible better outcomes that one can also imagine?

One can usually find a possible side benefit from even the worst event, such as learning to cope with horrible stuff, or gaining empathy for people. But how about all the less nasty ways that people can increase their empathy, or improve their coping skills?



The price of the Unknown Purpose Defence is the same as the price of the defence that we don't understand what good actually is. We lose all moral predictability, all sense that the suggested deity is setting a moral example. We are being asked to take his status as "good" on faith, in a way that nullifies ALL of the deities actions. Because, if we can't use him taking a life as evidence of him being evil, then neither can we use him saving a life as evidence of him being good. If we can't use evidence of him being apparently cruel, then neither can we use evidence of him being apparently kind. If his motives are mysterious to this extent, then there is no reason to believe that the apparent sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was a benevolent action rather than a malicious one. Because, if we have a totally free hand to just make up stories, we can make up stories to explain it either way.

Christianity has had 2000 years of some of the best minds in Europe (and elsewhere) trying to come up with plausible stories that resonate, that appeal to our intuitions, that feel 'right'. But you have to bear in mind that part of the reason why some such stories now appear to make sense is that we've been raised in a culture where we've been told those stories from birth - they have become part of our culture's underlying assumptions about how the universe works.

Which leads us onto a special case of the Unknown Purpose Defence, the last mole and the number 1 most popular defence. So popular and integrated with our culture's worldview that it no longer seems to be an 'unknown' purpose. I'm talking about freewill...



2.1.6 Defence: If evil didn't exist, that would rob us of our free will

Free will is one of the biggest topics in philosophy, because it is tied in with so many other deep questions, such as 'mind versus brain', 'determinism, predestination and the nature of time and causality' and 'what it means to be a moral actor who can justly be held responsible for their actions'. It is obviously useful in law to be able to distinguish between a man who shot his wife because he was angry with her for burning his lunch again, and a man who shot his wife because of a hypnotic suggestion, or because his children were hostage, or because a chip in his brain place there by the evil Dr. Doom was controlling the movements of his body. Or a man who shot his wife after having had a brain injury, and thinking she was an attacking wolf, or a paper target at a fun fair. Or because it had damaged his IQ so much that he was just pulling the trigger because he liked the pretty bang-bang sounds.

But does it really exist? Or is it mostly an illusion, that we find useful for pragmatic purposes? In the same way we think about the objects around us as being 'solid', even though physicists tell us that they are more than 99% empty and less than 1% actual physical matter? Before we get onto the religious context, let's start with what modern science can tell us.



Libet, Benjamin (2002). “Do We Have Free Will?” in Kane, ed., (2002), 551–564

Libet conducted experiments designed to determine the timing of conscious willings or decisions to act in relation to brain activity associated with the physical initiation of behavior. The studies provide strong evidence that actions are already underway shortly before the agent wills to do it. As a result, we do not consciously initiate our actions. (Though we may be able to later veto them, before carrying them out.)



Wegner, Daniel (2002). "The Illusion of Conscious Will." Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

That human actions are ever initiated by their own conscious willings is simply a deeply-entrenched illusion. He goes onto explain why our cognitive systems generates this illusion.



We can accept what science tells us, and still hold criminals to account for their actions. The pragmatic justification for making use of the concept, and making use of legal trials and punishments, is unaltered by the neurological details of what is going on in the physical brain. In the same way, the actual nature of matter makes no difference to a juggler, just as long as the balls are caught by his hands, rather than passing through them.

Interestingly, when we look at the ancient Greek philosophers, before there were Christians intent on having a reason to think their God just, they didn't find a mechanistic universe view to be a great stumbling block. (LINK) - most were content to accept that if a deity had predetermined that a criminal should do something bad and then get caught, the right thing was still to punish that criminal, even though he couldn't have avoided that pre-determined fate.

Here's Sam Harris talking about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g

According to the Bible, it was possible to have free will before evil existed, or was known about, because Adam and Eve didn't start off knowing about it.

Genesis 3:3-6
King James Version (KJV)

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

either that, or He originally created them without free will. Either way, if it is valuable to God that evil exist in order that we can use free will to choose not to pick evil, then it must have always been His intention that Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Or, to put it another, way he knew in advance that she would likely do it, and decided to go ahead and create her anyway, rather than someone with a slightly less gullible or curious personality. In the same way a dog owner who puts an untrained puppy next to a steak intended for his own lunch shouldn't be surprised when the puppy eats it, despite being told not to. Before Eve knew what right and wrong were, how could she know that it was wrong to disobey God?

By the way, the iconography of the Garden of Eden: the tree, the snake, the eating of the fruit, can all be traced back to earlier religions in the region that ancient Judaism stemmed off from.

Image

Common scene found on seals from the twenty-third and twenty-second centuries BC: a seated male figure (identified by his head-dress of horns as a god) facing a female worshiper. The date palm and snake between them may merely be symbolic of fertility.



However, for the sake of argument, let's take it at face value. Let's assume that God is benevolent, and that He created a universe with a species of sentient creatures in it (humans), that he wanted to be able to exercise a free choice between doing good and doing evil, because only by being morally responsible for their own actions could the greatest good be achieved in the long run. (We don't need to specify the precise mechanic of why that is. If it helps visualise the situation, assume that people enjoy more the rewards they feel they have deserved, and so the souls that reach heaven will enjoy heaven more if they know their entry was deservedly granted based upon their freely choosen actions in life.)

From that premise, what sort of universe would we predict He would create? What sort of features ought it to have?

We'd expect low child mortality, so the vast majority of people got a chance to make choices
We'd expect a vast majority of people in the world to agree on which actions are good and which are evil
We'd expect people to be equally capable of rational thought and anticipating the consequences of their actions, rather than those who are already suffering from disease and poverty having a larger than average chance of physiological changes taking place in the brain (such as depression) that impair their decision making ability and strength of will.
We'd expect people to have an equal chance of developing empathy, rather than some (such as certain types of autistic people) having to work much harder. Similarly, we wouldn't expect psychopathy, or other mental conditions affecting moral decision making, to exist.
you can continue the exercise (there are many other predictions one can make), but even based upon that small sample, it is clear that our current universe is far from what would be expected from a benevolent creator who values our making free choices between good and evil. It is, on the other hand, what would be expected from naturalistic evolution that isn't interested in giving people an even break.

When it comes down to it, God valuing our free will so much that he inflicts natural evils such as spider wasps and meteors, is just another made up story, with no more basis or predictive power than any of the other suggested defences. It is an excuse. And a poor excuse, at that.



2.2 Failures of theory, summary

Either:

(A) God does not exist
or:

(B) God does exist, AND good and evil are arbitrary thing that God can define however He chooses
-- eliminated in 2.1.1
or:

(C) God does exist, AND good and evil are defined independently of God, AND God is a being that is less than 100% Good
-- eliminated in 2.1.2
or:

(D) God does exist, AND good and evil are defined independently of God, AND God is 100% Good
-- we can split this up, as a new argument:


------------------------------------------

Premise: We observe happening around us acts that appear to us to be gratuitously evil

Premise: Any being that was 100% good would prevent all acts that were actually gratuitously evil, if able to do so

Conclusion:

Either:

(E) God isn't powerful enough to do so
-- eliminated in 2.1.3
or

(F) The acts that appear to us to be gratuitously evil are actually good
-- eliminated in 2.1.4 and 2.1.5
or

(G) It is not the case that [ God does exist, AND good and evil are defined independently of God, AND God is 100% Good ]


The only possibility not eliminated is the first one:

(A) God does not exist



Apologies for getting mathematically rigorous there - I did try to give fair warning at the start of this game of whac-a-mole, that it was tricky to keep track of all the possibilities, and check off that each one in turn had been blocked. If you are not mathematically inclined, you might find more to your taste this summary of the flaws in the defences against the problem of evil that has been written as an alegorical tale of 12 police officers excusing why they didn't step in to prevent a murder:

The Tale of the Twelve Officers

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... /five.html

It is interesting, by the way, to look at the psychology of why worshippers want to believe that the deity they follow is not just powerful and on their side, but is a moral example worth following. There are strong similarities between the excuses we see here, and the excuses offered by people in another situation where they are at the mercy of a more powerful individual:

God as Abuser: Similarities Between the Christian God and Abusive Spouses

http://atheism.about.com/od/whatisgod/p ... busive.htm

The line "He hurt me because I deserved it" should ring warning bells in the minds of Christians desperately seeking to excuse what they see around them, A lingering death from starvation isn't for a child's good, and famines have happened naturally, long before Oxfam or modern transport made stopping them possible.

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We don't deserve that. None of us do.
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