Review of Signature in the Cell

Steven Meyer’s Signature in the Cell offers the most compelling argument in favor of Intelligent Design. For the seasoned and unseasoned scientist, the reader will encounter comprehensible, well-researched scientific arguments that warrant further discussion and research regarding design as a viable scientific theory. I urge Darwinian evolutionists to thoughtfully consider this book and engage with the arguments.

Chapter one offers an overview of Meyer’s intellectual journey of how he arrived at the question behind the origin of genetic information in DNA. Darwin asserts that unguided, natural processes appear designed, but it is not. Darwinian evolutionists halt at the observation of natural processes that appear designed and then assume that blind, natural processes fully account for this appearance. Thus, no further explanation is needed. However, Meyer astutely points out that Darwinian evolutionist language employs teleological language in describing living organisms, such as: “genetic information,” “transcription,” “translation,” and “signal-transduction circularity.” This chapter correctly asserts that evolutionary theory fails to account for the origin of life because “it could not explain the origin of genetic information.” The rest of the book discusses the numerous attempts that have been made in solving the “DNA enigma” and offers an inference to the best explanation in favor of Intelligent Design as the most viable account of DNA information.

Chapter two gives a historical overview of design and the process that led the scientific community to move towards favoring Darwinian evolution. Meyer reviews Wohler’s synthesis of urea experiment and Oparin’s view that evolutionary abiogenesis advanced gradually over a multibillion-year process. Chapter two closes with a discussion on the Miller-Urey experiment, which worked to advance Oparin’s ideas. Miller-Urey led many to believe that the origin of life could be accounted for with this lab experiment until Watson and Crick’s new discovery of the double helix DNA molecule in 1953.

Chapter three discusses Watson and Crick, the mystery of heredity, and the fact that DNA possesses a structural complexity that possesses a sequence of bases that carries genetic information. Meyer works to make a division between Shannon information and functional information. Meyer states, “Shannon information means that the more improbable an event, the more uncertainty it eliminates, and thus, the more information it conveys when a particular event occurs. The greater the number of possible characters at each site, and the longer the sequence of characters, the greater the information-carrying capacity or Shannon information associated with the sequence.” According to Meyer, Shannon information theory indicates that DNA and proteins possess vast information-carrying capacities, but it cannot distinguish between improbable sequences of symbols that convey a message. Chapter four continues the discussion of DNA code, the complexity of and specific arrangement of proteins, and information theory. In particular, Meyer discusses Shannon information theory in its assertion that the arrangement of letters “abfd skdj fkds” and “The sky is blue” are equal in the amount of information, but does not indicate whether one communicates something or not. In other words, it cannot distinguish between the functional or “message-bearing” ability from random arrangements. Ultimately, Meyer asserts that one must distinguish between sequences of characters that are improbable from those that are improbable, but specifically arranged to perform a function. This chapter works to distinguish DNA from mere information-carrying capacity and demonstrate that it possesses functional information that carries out a purpose.

Chapter five discusses more in depth how DNA code represents complexity that expands beyond any computer software code. In particular, Boeing’s CAD-CAM system strikingly resembles the DNA transcription and translation process. However, DNA’s code is much more complex. Thus, by using inference to the best explanation, intelligent design does provide the most explanatory power in regards to the presence of DNA information that surpasses any software system in complexity.

For the sake of space, I will not overview all twenty chapters, but will outline the most crucial points throughout the rest of this book. Before I do that, it is important to note that many attempt to equate intelligent design with creationism, arguments from ignorance, and god of the gaps fallacy. However, intelligent design does not qualify for any of these labels. The theory of intelligent design postulates that certain living things remain best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected, chancy process. While intelligent design does not oppose Darwinian evolution in the sense of changes over time, or that common ancestry exists between living organisms, it postulates that an intelligent source best explains certain irreducibly complex life forms. Accompanied by this point of disagreement, it is important to note that intelligent design does not endorse Creationism because ID theory defers commenting on the nature of the intelligent source, nor does it endorse any religious texts (i.e. Bible, Koran, ect…)

In fact, intelligent design need not point to supernatural source, for mathematician and philosopher of science William Dembski puts it this way: “Whether an intelligent cause is located within or outside nature (i.e., is respectively natural or supernatural) is a separate question from whether an intelligent cause has operated. Human actions are a case in point: Just as humans do not perform miracles every time they act as intelligent agents, so there is no reason to assume that for a designer to act as an intelligent agent requires a violation of natural laws.” Proponents of ID claim that inferences may be made about the past with confidence when they discover evidence or artifacts for which there is only one cause known to be capable of producing them, known as abductive reasoning.

Intelligent design is a viable scientific theory because it is not postulating theories from ignorance, mystery, or god of the gaps. Instead, design theory observes what can can be observed from nature and makes an inference to the best explanation that would best account for the presence of DNA information code that surpasses complexity of any human made software system. Indeed, one may accuse this reasoning of being a false analogy, but this argument still goes through because it’s not dependent upon the similarity between computer software and DNA. It depends on empirical observations of DNA information and postulates the best explanation that would account for the instructional code present in DNA. If natural processes could account for the origin of this information, then intelligent design would be falsified. Thus, until then, Intelligent Design is a viable theory.

To the previous commentators, you obviously have not read this book if you call this creationist propaganda. Intelligent design is not arguing for creationism, so please read this book and bring objections that the book actually discusses. In fact, one of the most influential modern day philosophers in my intellectual development is philosophy professor, Thomas Nagel (Atheist philosopher). See what he says about Meyer’s Signature in the Cell here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6931364.ece (scroll down until you see “Thomas Nagel” as the heading).

Critique of C.S. Lewis on the Efficacy of Prayer

Below are some comments on the efficacy of prayer by, C.S. Lewis. My comments are in bold.

SOME YEARS AGO I got up one morning intending to have my hair cut in preparation for a visit to London, and the first letter I opened made it clear I need not go to London. So I decided to put the haircut off too. But then there began the most unaccountable little nagging in my mind, almost like a voice saying, “Get it cut all the same. Go and get it cut.” In the end I could stand it no longer. I went. Now my barber at that time was a fellow Christian and a man of many troubles whom my brother and I had sometimes been able to help. The moment I opened his shop door he said, “Oh, I was praying you might come today.” And in fact if I had come a day or so later I should have been of no use to him.

It awed me; it awes me still. But of course one cannot rigorously prove a causal connection between the barber’s prayers and my visit. It might be telepathy. It might be accident.

These scenarios happen all the time regardless of prayer. I bet without prayer, one’s hopes would still come true at times and events that surpass our understanding would still occur. It may or may not be an accident, but it is impossible to know for sure either way.

I have stood by the bedside of a woman whose thighbone was eaten through with cancer and who had thriving colonies of the disease in many other bones, as well. It took three people to move her in bed. The doctors predicted a few months of life; the nurses (who often know better), a few weeks. A good man: laid his hands on her and prayed. A year later the patient was walking (uphill, too, through rough woodland) and the man who took the last X-ray photos was saying, “These bones are as solid as rock. It’s miraculous.”

But once again there is no rigorous proof. Medicine, as all true doctors admit, is not an exact science. We need not invoke the supernatural to explain the falsification of its prophecies. You need not, unless you choose, believe in a causal connection between the prayers and the recovery.

Exactly. Many scientific studies have been done on prayer and none reveal that prayer makes any difference. It is more obvious that the universe acts in an undiscerning manner, regardless of what one believes or whether they pray or not. See Harvard Medical School’s test results: http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.html

The question then arises, “What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?” The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers. The answer surely is that a compulsive empirical Proof such as we have in the sciences can never be attained.

Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experiences. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament, which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.

Other things are proved not simply by experience but by those artificially contrived experiences, which we call experiments. Could this be done about prayer? I will pass over the objection that no Christian could take part in such a project, because he has been forbidden it: “You must not try experiments on God, your Master.” Forbidden or not, is the thing even possible?

So God commands anti-intellectualism to not put him under the test? What about doubting Thomas? Jesus invited and answered his need for verification. Also, testing God is deemed acceptable for Gideon in Judges 6:36-40, but not in Deuteronomy 6:16 or Matthew 4:7, Luke 4:12. Good last question here.

I have seen it suggested that a team of people—the more the better—should agree to pray as hard as they knew how, over a period of six weeks, for all the patients in Hospital A and none of those in Hospital B. Then you would total up the results and see if A had more cures and fewer deaths. And I suppose you would repeat the experiment at various times and places so as to eliminate the influence of irrelevant factors.

The trouble is that I do not see how any real prayer could go on under such conditions. “Words without thoughts never to heaven go,” says the King in Hamlet. Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men for our experiment. You cannot pray for the recovery of the sick unless the end you have in view is their recovery. But you can have no motive for desiring the recovery of all the patients in one hospital and none of those in another. You are not doing it in order that suffering should be relieved; you are doing it to find out what happens. The real purpose and the nominal purpose of your prayers are at variance. In other words, whatever your tongue and teeth and knees may do, you are not praying. The experiment demands an impossibility.

How about conducting experiments where there are people who truly care and have the correct motive (as best as humanly possible), pray in the experiment mentioned in the previous paragraph? Why can’t this work?

Empirical proof and disproof are, then, unobtainable. But this conclusion will seem less depressing if we remember that prayer is request and compare it with other specimens of the same thing.

This conclusion isn’t depressing, but just asserts that prayer lacks evidence in its favor. I would rather pursue truth and disregard falsified theories rather than be comfortable. This paragraph is playing intellectual gymnastics in trying to save the value of prayer and it fails due to its emotive agenda.

We make requests of our fellow creatures as well as of God: we ask for the salt, we ask for a raise in pay, we ask a friend to feed the cat while we are on our holidays, we ask a woman to marry us. Sometimes we get what we ask for and sometimes not. But when we do, it is not nearly so easy as one might suppose to prove with scientific certainty a causal connection between the asking and the getting.

Actually, David Hume is correct in saying that one cannot have 100% certainty in causal events. Lewis is on to something here.

Your neighbor may be a humane person who would not have let your cat starve even if you had forgotten to make any arrangement. Your employer is never so likely to grant your request for a raise as when he is aware that you could get better money from a rival firm and is quite possibly intending to secure you a raise in any case. As for the lady who consents to marry you—are you sure she had not decided to do so already? Your proposal, you know, might have been the result, not the cause, of her decision. A certain important conversation might never have taken place unless she had intended that it should.

I tend to think that proposals are the result of a relationship heading towards lifelong commitment. Her decision rests on the foundation of a healthy and loving relationship, not in the question alone. However, the question is a crucial ingredient for advancing of a dating relationship to a marriage relationship.

Thus in some measure the same doubt that hangs about the causal efficacy of our prayers to God hangs also about our prayers to man.

Since when do people pray to man? Is this a Biblical teaching?

Whatever we get we might have been going to get anyway. But only, as I say, in some measure. Our friend, boss, and wife may tell us that they acted because we asked; and we may know them so well as to feel sure, first that they are saying what they believe to be true, and secondly that they understand their own motives well enough to be right. But notice that when this happens our assurance has not been gained by the methods of science.

First of all, I do not see any assurance here whatsoever, with or without science. Second, this approach is using practical reason and psychology. Thus, this case does use methods of science.  How so? By first studying or getting to know the behavior and character of the other person, then making predictions and placing confidence in a particular outcome.

We do not try the control experiment of refusing the raise or breaking off the engagement and then making our request again under fresh conditions. Our assurance is quite different in kind from scientific knowledge. It is born out of our personal relation to the other parties; not from knowing things about them but from knowing them.

I don’t believe personal relation to others erases science or reason. One bases decisions off of experience and the knowledge they have up to a certain point.

Our assurance—if we reach an assurance—that God always hears and some­times grants our prayers, and that apparent grantings are not merely fortuitous, can only come in the same sort of way. There can be no question of tabulating successes and failures and trying to decide whether the successes are too numer­ous to be accounted for by chance. Those who best know a man best know whether, when he did what they asked, he did it because they asked. I think those who best know God will best know whether He sent me to the barber’s shop because the barber prayed.

Half of this paragraph is devoted to the fact that one cannot know whether an outcome is by God or by chance and the second half is saying one can know if they “know God best.” This presumes that God is knowable, so it begs the question on how God is knowable.

For up till now we have been tackling the whole question in the wrong way and on the wrong level. The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. “Work”: as if it were magic, or a ma­chine—something that functions automatically. Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctu­ary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.

If God shows himself to humans through prayer, why does He show himself in millions of ways such that humans do not have a coherent idea of God’s existence, let alone which God is the one true God. Isn’t it interesting that people in the Middle East say this same thing, but insert Allah as God? I propose that beliefs change people, not God. For example, Muslims live a certain way because of their beliefs in the what the Koran commands, Christians live a certain way because of their beliefs, ect….Jews, Muslims, and Christians all say the same thing regarding revelation, but all contradict one another. Some possibilities for this is: one true God exists and speaks in contradictory ways, all three Gods exist in a contradictory existence, God or Gods do not exist and humanity creates religion which is reflective of our different cultures, or there is one true God and He is allowing people to believe in counterfeit Gods and/or not speaking to certain people through revelation.

Petitionary prayer is, nonetheless, both allowed and commanded to us: “Give us our daily bread.” And no doubt it raises a theoretical problem. Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?

Open Theism anyone? One will never know whether open theism, Calvinism, or any other theological stance is correct as the Bible can defend multiple views on this topic.

For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will.

This is the appeal to mystery regarding evil and the unsaved. Moreover, this behavior is incompatible with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent God. If he truly could eradicate evil and chooses not to or even worse, could save the “heathen” without missionaries, then this kind of God is sadistic and cruel. Given this reasoning, it is far from clear what “God’s will” is. If God’s will is indiscernible, then why bother?

“God,” said Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.

Where is the justification for movement equaling God’s agency?

For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collabo­rate in the work, “to wield our little tridents.” Is this amazing process simply Creation going on before our eyes? This is how (no light matter) God makes something—indeed, makes gods—out of nothing.

So at least it seems to me. But what I have offered can be, at the very best, only a mental model or symbol. All that we say on such subjects must be merely analogical and parabolic. The reality is doubtless not comprehensible by our faculties. But we can at any rate try to expel bad analogies and bad parables. Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate.

If all “finite causes operate from the continuous act of God,” then God is the author of evil and failure.

Combating the Diversion Obsessed Culture

American culture is enslaved to distraction, vanity, and a myriad of pursuits that tragically leads to a fleeting sense of fulfillment. Time and energy are spent fueling the unexamined life in order to escape thinking about despair in their lives, their mortality, and the ultimate purpose in life. The unexamined life is filled with an inordinate amount of activities that encompasses constant diversion, which ultimately leads to separation from thoughtful pursuits. Furthermore, the unexamined life leads to surface level relationships and further insinuates the culture of isolation. As a result, individuals increasingly cheapen the human experience by replacing it with an artificial human experience. Thus, one never truly fills the soul and instead, recapitulates the cycle of despair.

I think the following areas lie at the root of despair:  weak communication/inter-personal relationships due to an increasingly isolated individual, poor critical thinking skills, and diversion-driven minds. As a result, I hope to teach critical thinking to high school students (and eventually college students) to combat this ever increasing epidemic of uncritical thinking.

On a personal note, my separation from God has given me the most despair over the past year than anything else. Despite my theological and philosophical issues with Christianity and the Bible (especially the OT), I still think that Jesus led a compelling life that brings everlasting restoration and transformation. Furthermore, I think the way I engage the world and others largely reflects Christ’s influence (i.e. caring for the poor, sacrificing for others, living in community, cherishing my time alive, pursuing intellectual growth, encouraging the downtrodden, challenging the comfortable, hoping for an afterlife, and investing in people who are both like and different from me). Would I adhere to all Christian doctrines and beliefs? Not quite.  For instance, I am not willing to overlook or make excuses for God’s despicable character in the OT. This includes his commands involving genocide, stoning, and condoning the devil to torture Job. I also do not know what to do with the fact that if “the Fall” is real, then God did set humanity up for failure. As a result, He created humanity knowing they would fail and would need a “Savior.”

Furthermore, if anyone fails to arrive at proper belief about this Savior, they do not inherit eternal life. Does this make any sense to you given the fact that God is hidden and far from clear? Is this what one would expect from an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God? Why would a God create the world knowing that many would end up in hell? I do not think God should have created at all knowing that some of his supposedly beloved creations would suffer eternal separation from Him. If He was truly concerned about everyone’s eternal destiny, I think He should provide more obvious evidence that He exists and needs people to believe a certain way. If God allowed, if not destined humanity to fail in the beginning, why can’t He provide for a second chance after death or transform the person after death? I know Scripture explicitly states that there is no second chance after death in Hebrews, but this is absurd given God’s plan of doom for humanity, which results in only small group participating in heaven? Also, I seriously doubt the holy spirit’s power to convict people of this reality. It seems like God is allowing Satan to win most of the world’s population if Christianity is true.

Despite these issues, I think there is an insinuating power to Christ’s teachings that can, and has changed many lives for the better. I think his teachings need to be considered and lived out in community. This does not necessarily mean that one must participate in a church service, although it may be helpful. I think the community of Christian faith means: studying the ways of Christ, prayer, living out His teachings, loving friends and enemies (this does not mean 100% passivity), live a life that reflects hope in Christ’s redemptive and transformative power, sharing meals, stories, hopes, dreams, caring for one another along with the surrounding community, pushing one another to grow by devoting life to study and intellectual development together, and practicing accountability.

Philosophy Faculty Surveyed

931 philosophy faculty responded to a survey regarding many philosophical issues, but I will highlight one here:

Accept or lean toward: atheism 678 / 931 (72.8%)

Accept or lean toward: theism 136 / 931 (14.6%)

Other 117 / 931 (12.5%)

I’m actually surprised the theist side is that high. In my own experience (outside of seminary, of course), I would say every professor I have taken a class from were atheists or agnostics. One reason I think this is the case is because most philosophers studying as undergraduates focus on on Hume, Nietzsche, John Dewey, Freud, Schopenhauer, Sartre, ect… when it comes to religion. Rarely does anyone read Winfred Corduan, W.L. Craig, J.P. Moreland, Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, Norm Geisler, Peter Kreeft, Alvin Plantinga, Michael Rae, Richard Swinburn, William Wainwright, Pascal, and more….  Most philosophy professors I know at the secular university have no idea who any of these philosophers are. I think secular, undergraduate institutions need to deal more with theistic arguments for God and lessen the bias towards Atheism/Skepticism. Personally, while I think atheism contains the most compelling evidence (i.e. hiddenness of god, evil, the undiscerning nature of the universe, scientific studies confirm that prayer has no influence on outcomes, all “sacred” books are very humanistic, and no evidence for disembodied minds/spirits, so it seems like the mind depends on the physical body), however, I think theism is at least viable, but very difficult to support.

Yesterday, on my ancient Greek final, I wrote about Plato’s Laws X. There was a question that asked whether I find theistic or atheistic arguments more compelling. My response indicated that I think atheism has the best support intellectually, but I have a hunch or intuition that a God exists. Granted my reasons for even considering theism still points to the mystery of life from non-life (abiogenesis) and the unresolved phenomena of consciousness. Indeed, arguments from ignorance and god of the gaps fallacy apply here, however, my main goal as a philosophy student and aspiring teacher is to remain objective and follow the evidence where it leads. For now, I’m agnostic, but think atheism is more compelling, so why don’t I call myself an atheist? Well, it’s because I do not have enough confidence to say that God probably does not exist. All I can say is that I just don’t know either way given the evidence.

Critique of J.P. Moreland’s Argument from Consciousness

This is a rough draft of my critique of Moreland’s argument from consciousness.

J.P. Moreland is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Biola University. He is most notable for his defense of Christian theism and his rejection of naturalism as a plausible worldview. One of his most recent books, Consciousness and the Existence of God argues that finite, irreducible consciousness provides evidence for the existence of God. Throughout his book, Moreland critiques rival physicalists such as, John Searle’s “contingent correlation,” Timothy O’Connor’s “emergent necessitation,” Colin McGinn’s “mysterian naturalism,” David Skrbina’s “panpsychism,” and Philip Clayton’s “pluralistic emergentist monism.” According to Moreland, all of these positions should be rejected in favor of the “argument from consciousness” for theism. This paper will illustrate Moreland’s argument from consciousness (AC) defended in chapter two, of which I will offer a critique. Included in my critique, I will attempt to demonstrate how I think Moreland’s argument from consciousness is equally, if not more incomplete as physicalist accounts.

Prior to offering a deductive argument for the argument from consciousness (AC), Moreland states that physicalists must admit that consciousness is a brute, unexplainable fact. The main agenda of this chapter and book is to argue that naturalists should be strict physicalists and, given property dualism, there is evidence against naturalism and for theism (Moreland, 38).  His discussion of naturalism leading up to his deductive argument claims that finite, mental activities may be unaccounted for by naturalism and may be best explained by theism, thereby offering evidence for God’s existence. A main challenge to naturalism is the burden of proof on the naturalist who seeks to reconcile the existent of emergent mental entities with naturalism.

Furthermore, Moreland argues that consciousness is “ontologically basic” for theism, whereas for naturalism, consciousness requires explanation. He defines distinguishes between “ontological basicality” and “pre-theoretical basicality” by defining the latter as “an entity’s nature that remains in tact and the theoretician’s aim is to explain the entity’s origin or behavior, but not reduce it” (Moreland, 29). He argues that consciousness is ontologically basic for theism because the consciousness of God accounts for this fact. However, Moreland claims that naturalism treats “consciousness as emergent, derivative, supervenient, and both its finitude and intrinsic nature require explanation (Moreland, 29).” He quotes Evan Fales who claims that Darwinian evolution implies that human beings emerged through a blind operation of natural forces. Fales continues to say, “it is mysterious how such forces could generate something non-physical. Since such processes have produced consciousness, however construed, consciousness is evidently a natural phenomenon, and dependent on natural phenomena.”

Moreland claims that this reasoning is ad hoc and question begging given theism and AC, since Fales acknowledges unnaturalness of consciousness within naturalist ontology. Moreover, Moreland believes this is a category mistake to link non-physical phenomena with physical processes alone. A central objection to naturalism in this book appears in chapter two when Moreland states that naturalism embraces “ontological simplicity and epistemic preference for the third-person account, which places pressure on the naturalist to be a strong physicalist” (Moreland, 31); whereas for theists, they do not have this pressure because consciousness need not be reduced with the explanation from AC or theism.

For instance, according to Moreland’s AC, theistic metaphysics does account for consciousness by imposing the unembodied mind of God and asserts that it isn’t surprising that finite consciousness exists. Moreland claims that on a naturalist account, mental states “are out of place” or a category mistake and thus, consciousness must be a brute fact for the naturalist. Moreland holds the view that mental states are describable from a first person view, but not from a third person point of view. For example, a scientist can explain what it might be like for a lion to chase down its prey, but the scientist would never know what it is like to be this hunting lion. For more on this topic, see Thomas Nagel’s compelling argument of how a third-person account cannot explain a first-person experience in “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”

One of Moreland’s central claims asserts that naturalists should be strong physicalists in order to avoid inconsistency, category mistakes, and question begging. Even naturalist, David Papineau claims that physicalists should deny that there are two properties, the physical and non-physical in answer to the question of why consciousness emerges from some physical systems and not others. For example, why is it the case that humans possess consciousness, but microbes do not? Since physicalism cannot account for consciousness or the first-person experience of the world, some physicalists and Moreland claim that all naturalists need to reject dualism and instead, hold to a strong physicalist view to escape this dilemma. For, if the physicalist admits to the existence of non-physical entities, they open the door to the possibility of theistic accounts and become trapped in question-begging, category mistakes.

In addition to Moreland’s argument from consciousness (AC), theists, Richard Swinburn, Angus Menuge, and Robert Adams offer similar versions as well. However, I will focus on the deductive argument espoused by Moreland. Here is his argument as follows:

1)    “Mental events are genuine non-physical mental entities that exist.

2)    Specific mental event types are regularly correlated with specific physical event types.

3)    There is an explanation for these correlations.

4)    Personal explanation is different from natural scientific explanation.

5)    The explanation for these correlations is either a personal or natural scientific explanation.

6)    The explanation is not a natural scientific one.

7)    Therefore, the explanation is a personal one.

8)    If the explanation is personal, then it is theistic.

9)    Therefore, the explanation is theistic” (Moreland, 37).

In chapter two Moreland does not completely defend premises (3) and (6) because he spends the rest of the book explaining these points. However, my critique will cover premises (1), (2), and (4), and will touch upon one point he makes about premise (3). The critique of these premises should be sufficient to demonstrate that Moreland is equally incomplete as the physicalists in an account of consciousness.

Regarding premise (1), he admits that the truth of premise one is an assumption and then immediately claims that property dualism yields evidence against naturalism and for theism. Property dualists argue that mental states are not physical since they possess the following six features that characterize mental states, but not physical states as follows:

a)     “There is a raw qualitative feel or ‘what it is like’ to a mental state such as pain.

b)    At least many mental states have intentionality—oftness or aboutness—directed towards an object.

c)     Mental states exhibit certain epistemic features (direct access, private access, first-person epistemic authority, are expressed in intentional contexts, self-reflexivity associated with “I”) that could not be the case if they were physical.

d)    They require a subjective ontology—namely, mental states are necessarily owned by the first-person, unified, sentient subjects who have them.

e)     Mental states fail to have crucial features (e.g. spatial extension, location) that characterize physical states and, in general, cannot be described using physical language.

f)     Libertarian free acts exemplify active power and not passive liability” (Moreland, 38).

Moreland spends several pages backing up premise (a) with the knowledge argument, which attacks the physicalist’s claim that physical explanations completely account for mental states. The famous example proponents of the knowledge argument point to is the fact that Mary may know everything about the science of color perception, but the question is whether she can know what the experience of red is like if she has never seen red. If the answer is “yes,” then Mary has learned something new and thus, physicalism fails to account for this newly acquired knowledge. After asserting this knowledge argument, Moreland moves into a discussion of premise (4), which states that, “personal explanation is different from natural scientific explanation.”

His main justification for this premise rests upon the difference between personal and event causal theory of agency. Event causal theory essentially argues that actions are events caused by combinations of intentional attitudes (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions) and most significantly, it holds that in order to cause behavior, intentional attitudes must be neural events that physicalism can fully explain. Moreland points to naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie who rejects premise (4) because he labels personal explanation as “a sub-class of event causal theory.” J.L. Mackie contends that human action involves “efficient event causality” between prior mental states that depend completely on physical states, and thus, there is no need to insert a theistic explanation. Any discussion of divine agency or analogy between divine action and personal explanation is a disanalogy because this connection is completely mysterious and unaccounted for.

As a response to common objections that Mackie points to, Moreland proposes that personal explanation of mental states is superior to event causal because according to premises (2) and (3) of AC, the causal theory will not account for the “origin, regularity, and precise nature of these correlations, since these are what constitute a causal theory of action in the first place. If a causal theory of action presupposes mental states, then it will be important to explain the existence, regularity, and precise nature of those mental states unless a divine causal agency of action is used” (Moreland, 47).  Given reasons for personal explanation, Moreland sees no good reason why a theist cannot use divine causal theory to account for the nature of mental states.

To further establish his case that theism should be a viable option to explain consciousness, Moreland points to Thomas Nagel’s argument that natural scientific explanation of consciousness is inadequate and criticizes him for not considering theism as a plausible explanation of the mental. Moreland believes that, “Nagel expresses a view about freedom and personal explanation according to which libertarian freedom is what we take ourselves to have, yet we cannot have it, given naturalism and the external, third-person scientific point of view” (Moreland, 49). If naturalism is true, then everything is determined according to physical laws of nature.

Furthermore, Moreland believes that Nagel would accept premises (1) through (4) and as a result, thinks these premises are sufficient for deeming scientific naturalism as false. Many object by saying that theism cannot give any understanding of consciousness, but Moreland says this is based on the assumption that an explanation must point to a mechanism before it offers an adequate explanation (Moreland, 49). Instead, Moreland believes that a personal explanation need not offer a mechanism, but instead, account for personal explanation by describing the “relevant person, his intentions, the basic power exercised, and offer a description of the action plan” (Moreland, 50). Thus, he believes that if we have a model for who God is and His intentions for creating the world, one should be able to reference God in regards to mental states because a non-physical agent best explains non-physical mental states.

Critique of Moreland’s Argument from Consciousness

Premise (1) states, “mental events are genuine non-physical mental entities that exist.” To justify this premise, Moreland admits this is an assumption and highlights property dualism to support the case that mental states are not physical states. Property dualism claims that the physical is the only substance and it denies the existence of immaterial minds that somehow interact with the physical world. Property dualism does not reduce mental states to physical states because mental states are irreducible. Although there is only one type of substance: physical, there are two types of property: physical and non-physical. Bodies have physical properties such weight and height, and mental properties such as beliefs and desires. Moreland points to property dualism to support his first premise that mental states are non-physical entities, but ignores the fact that property dualists believe that the mental relies on the physical for its existence. For, the physical is the only substance that contains two types of property.

While mental events may not be equivalent to physical events, this is still undetermined. While Moreland is accusing strong physicalists of begging the question and espousing consciousness as a brute fact, I believe he is equally as guilty of begging the question. In attempt to completely separate the physical with the non-physical with premise (1), Moreland is ignoring the fact that we have yet to account for mind without physical embodiment. At the conclusion of chapter two, Moreland states, “perhaps our conclusion that a naturalist ought to be a strong physicalist is premature. Maybe there are adequate naturalist accounts of the mental” (Moreland, 51). This is inconsistent with his first premise and its justification because to admit that maybe the physical can account for consciousness, while at the same time, claiming that physicalism is false is misleading.

While I agree that the first-person account is currently unexplained by physicalist accounts, this does not mean that there is a “genuine” difference between physical and mental states. Just because a physicalist account of first person experience and intentionality is not complete does not mean that theism or Berkeley’s idealism should be the case. It is especially untenable to claim that just because strong physicalism may be false does not mean that property dualism is false. In fact, I do not think strong physicalism should be abandoned because science may solve this quandary in the future.

I am not opposed to one working towards accounting for consciousness with theism or Berkeley’s idealism, however, it is unclear how this could be established because the theistic proposal does not yield any new information about how consciousness arose from a theistic entity.  The AC runs into the same dogmatic assertion that the strong physicalists encounter because both strict physicalism and theism are incomplete or unable to account for consciousness. However, I would argue that theism is even more incomplete than strong physicalism because no observable or testable evidence for the existence of a non-physical, personal agent who is responsible for consciousness exists. Theists encounter the same problem as strict physicalists by also begging the question with the explanation of how the immaterial interacts and/or causes the material.

In support of premise (2), Moreland claims that physicalist’s typically endorse the causal theory, however, he argues that physicalists cannot account for the “origin, regularity, and precise nature of these correlations, since these are what constitute a causal theory of action in the first place. If an event causal theory of action presupposes mental states, then it will be important to explain the existence, regularity, and precise nature of those mental states unless a divine causal agency of action is used” (Moreland, 47). While I agree with Thomas Nagel that physicalism is incomplete in that it needs to account for the existence and nature of mental states, this does not mean that a theistic explanation automatically wins favor over physicalism or even qualifies as a plausible explanation.

I believe Nagel is correct in not positing alternatives, but instead merely states that reductive physicalism is incomplete. When one posits theism or panpsychist theories, this presents an argument from ignorance and god of the gaps fallacy. In fact, I think premise (2) provides more support for physicalism than theism because if some or even many mental states can be traced to particular physical states, then this provides more explanatory power than theism. Theism begs more questions and lacks empirical verification. While I realize that just because something cannot be empirically verified does not mean it is true or false, however, I think conclusions strengthen when they merit empirical verification.

Moreland points to Thomas Nagel’s argument that natural scientific explanation of consciousness is inadequate and criticizes him for not considering theism as a plausible explanation of the mental. Moreland believes that, “Nagel expresses a view about freedom and personal explanation according to which libertarian freedom is what we take ourselves to have, yet we cannot have it, given naturalism and the external, third-person scientific point of view” (Moreland, 49). My objection to Moreland here points to the question of how one knows that humans possess libertarian freedom given theism.  Even within Christian theology, some strands of Calvinism claim that God determines who is “saved” and determines every event that occurs in the world. The argument fails to establish how libertarian freedom follows from theism or a personal agent. For all we know, a super-brain or Berkeley’s idealist mind could completely determine events in the world. Furthermore, just because “we take ourselves to have libertarian freedom” in no way indicates that we actually possess freedom.

How do we know that humanity cannot have any freedom if naturalism is true? Certainly, we know aspects of life are determined such as, what family we are born into, our genetic makeup, what gender we are, ect…however, whether all events in human life are determined, partially-determined, or not determined is beyond knowledge. If naturalism is true, this does not automatically mean that all natural events are determined. This is not the most troubling claim Moreland makes. The most puzzling claim he make is that a “personal explanation need not offer a mechanism, but instead, accounts for personal explanation by describing the relevant person, his intentions, the basic power exercised, and offer a description of the action plan” (Moreland, 50). Just because a non-physical, supernatural agent possesses the same ontology as a non-physical mental state does not mean this is the best explanation or even a plausible explanation. However, if evidence existed to the fact that a disembodied consciousness existed, then this would provide some evidence for one to use inference to the best explanation.

Those who rely on these types of methods often arrive at contradictory conclusions about the nature of the supernatural. So if the supernatural world or personal agent exists, it does not appear that science or any kind of inquiry has yet to discover reliable means for acknowledging it. While incomplete, physicalism at least offers more explanatory power via empirical observation (i.e. brain scanning) in regards to the existence of mental states such as pain, emption, and thought. Whereas theism or any kind of supernatural explanation begs the question and argues from ignorance in the same way as strong physicalists when they assert certainty that consciousness warrants a purely physicalist response. The most honest approach is to admit the incompleteness of physicalism and continue to search for answers, which both theism and strong physicalism fail to provide.

Arguing from Consciousness to God

For my twentieth century analytic philosophy class, I am taking on the challenge of writing a final paper that will critique J.P. Moreland’s chapter, “the argument from consciousness” from his book, Consciousness and the Existence of God. Once this semester commences, I will be able to catch up on previous discussions and offer more profound writings–at least that is the goal.

UCD Ethics Bowl Team

On Nov. 21st, I competed on a team with three other philosophy majors in the Rocky Mountain Region Ethics Bowl competition, held at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We won all four rounds to qualify for nationals, held in Cincinnati, Ohio in February! Here were the interesting cases we debated.

Gregory Dawes on “Theism and Explanation”

Has anyone read this book and/or know anything about Dawes’ worldview? After reading a review in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, I am very interested in reading this book. Unfortunately, I will have to wait until the end of December.

Notes on Nagel and Searle

Thomas Nagel: What Is It Like To Be a Bat?

1) Consciousness keeps the mind/body problem alive because reductive physicalism is incomplete when it comes to accounting for phenomenological features of subjective experience. Nagel is not refuting reductive physicalism, but merely states that it is an incomplete theory. For example, the neurophysiology of tasting a strawberry does not give account of the qualitative experience of tasting a strawberry.

2) Nagel further illustrates the problem with psychophysical reduction with his bat example. We can talk about what it’s like to be a bat with sonar, but we as humans will never know what it is truly like to be a bat, let alone a blind person or a Martian. Nagel asserts that there are facts that do not fit into human language and concepts. While disparate things (i.e. human and a bat) can objectively experience a wall in that we both know its there and looks a certain way, neither can know what its like to experience a wall as the other.

3) Further problems with psychophysical reduction: In one sense, phenomenological facts can be objective, as in one person can know what the other is experiencing, but the more disparate the experiencers are, the less objectivity remains in their experiences. So, objective processes can have subjective nature.

4) More thought needs to be given to the problem of objective and subjective phenomenology in order to begin discussing the mind/body problem.

Searle: Can Computers Think?

Searl is arguing against strong AI. In fact, he coined the term “strong AI” with his Chinese room experiment and worked to distinguish between 2 hypotheses about Artificial Intelligence:

1) An artificial intelligence system can think and have a mind.
2) An artificial intelligence system can (only) act like it.

Can computers think? Yes in a sense they can compute inputs and formulate outputs, but Searl’s main question is whether implementing the right inputs and outputs are sufficient for thinking. The answer is no. Syntax does not equal semantics. Thus, meaning does not equal symbolic manipulation, which the Chinese Room experiment demonstrates.

It is important to note the difference between duplication and simulation:

A computer can simulate the weather, but simulations are not the real thing. A computer simulation of a storm will not leave us all wet. Searle thinks that simulation of mental processes does not mean that the computer actually possesses mental processes. Thus, a computer is unable to duplicate consciousness, thoughts, feelings, & emotions.

Searle thinks there’s a simple solution to the mind/body problem. Mental phenomena are both caused by biological processes in the brain and are themselves features of the brain. As a biological naturalist, he claims that mental states are biological phenomena. Consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation are all a part of our biological life history, along with growth, reproduction, the secretion of bile, and digestion.

Intelligent Design Conference

I attended The Legacy of Darwin Intelligent Design Conference in Castle Rock, Colorado on October 30-31.

Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, and John West gave presentations.

David Berlinski spoke about his arguments for ID based on his two books The Deniable Darwin and The Devils Delusion in interview format.

Saturday afternoon included a panel discussion with John West, Stephen Meyer, Doug Groothuis, and Craig Smith on the topic of “Training the Next Generation-Practical Strategies and Resources.”

Since I was fortunate to attend a seminar this past summer at the Discovery Institute, I already heard from John West on the cultural impact of Darwinism and a panel discussion on “training the next generation,” so I did not attend these sessions. As for David Berlinski, I will need to read his two books to comment. In this post, I will outline Steve Meyer’s argument and offer some comment on a couple potential objections at the end. Overall, I found Steve Meyer presented the strongest case for ID, while I think Michael Behe’s arguments and examples are problematic. However, I humbly propose that they can be improved. My comments on Behe will be included in the next post.

This is the second time I have heard Steve Meyer speak and it was an excellent presentation. He is definitely a gifted teacher who inspires me to present information that well in the future.

Here are his main points:

Steve Meyer’s thesis: Intelligent design is the best explanation for the existence of complex information in DNA.

Meyer begins speaking about the definition of materialism and its relationship to Darwinian theory. Under materialism, Meyer claims that “the thing from which everything else comes is matter or material process.” He then presents idealism (everything is mind dependent) and Theism as the other options to account for the “appearance of design.” On the appearance of design, Darwin even says that “life gives the illusion of design.”

Meyer is not answering Darwin’s theory of “undirected process” that is capable of producing the appearance of designed life. Instead, Meyer examines the question of life itself. Is there any evidence of design in the simplest forms of life? Up until recently, the cell was viewed to be made of protoplasm (T.H. Huxley, 1889). In 1953 Crick & Watson discovered that the DNA structure is double helixed and carried information from one generation to the next. Crick proposed the sequence hypothesis, which states that the bases in the genetic material (ACTG), determines the sequence of amino acids for which nucleic acid codes. This amino acid sequence then determines the structure into which protein folds, which is required for a protein to function. Meyer asserts that this hypothesis presents the essential link between stored information and the chemical process of inheritance, which enables life to exist.

Along the spine of the DNA molecule there are four molecules that behave like digital characters in a machine code. They conveyed instructions for building protein structures that the cell needs to survive through amino acid sequencing. Information in DNA directs protein synthesis (known as gene expression), in which messenger RNA (mRNA) moves through a ribosome (site of protein manufacture), which a molecular machine helps translate the mRNA instructions. These instructions consist of codons, which are “genetic words.” Codons provide a template to which adapter molecules attach and rings into a single amino acid. This translation process occurs with help from translator RNA (tRNA) and aminoacyl-tRNA). To see the process of gene expression, go here.

The instructions described in this process brings up a “DNA Enigma.” Where does this information come from? Meyer works to make a division between Shannon information and functional information. Meyer states, “Shannon information means that the more improbable an event, the more uncertainty it eliminates, and thus, the more information it conveys when a particular event occurs. The greater the number of possible characters at each site, and the longer the sequence of characters, the greater the information-carrying capacity or Shannon information associated with the sequence.”

According to Meyer, Shannon information theory indicates that DNA and proteins possess vast information-carrying capacities, but it cannot distinguish between improbable sequences of symbols that convey a message. For example, Shannon information theory would assert that the arrangement of letters “adnf slkd dkls” and “The sky is blue” are equal in the amount of information, but does not indicate whether one communicates something or not. In other words, it cannot distinguish between the functional or “message-bearing” ability from random arrangements. Ultimately, Meyer asserts that one must distinguish between sequences of characters that are improbable from those that are improbable, but are specifically arranged to perform a function. He concludes that DNA is more than mere shannon information because it possesses functional information that carries out a purpose.

Related to this issue, Meyer briefly discusses Dean Kenyon’s biochemical predestination theory, which Kenyon ends up rejecting. This theory worked to explain that the self-assembly of biochemical molecular compounds such as proteins from non-living raw chemicals under the correct environmental conditions. Amino acids are structured and have properties that are predisposed to assemble in a way that chance production of life molecules like proteins can account for.

However, the theory of biochemical predestination fails because it cannot explain how complex amino acid based proteins self-assembled themselves without DNA based sequencing or assembly codes. As a result, this theory begs the question because it assumes the existence of living molecules of which it seeks to explain its spontaneous origins. Alternatively, Meyer asserts that the base sequencing in DNA is not the result of biochemical predestination, just like the words arrangement on the printed page are not the result of chemical forces.

Charles Thaxton, whom I was fortunate to meet at the Discovery Institute seminar wrote a book, The Mystery of Life & Origin. He proposes that chemical evolutionary theory has failed to explain the origin of life and the central problem pointed to the origin of information in the DNA molecule rests on the fact that chance & necessity cannot account for its existence.

Inspired by Thaxton, Meyer asks, could you infer design as the best explanation? Inference to the best explanation (used in historical sciences and physics) posits that when you have a historical event you want to explain, you need to propose all plausible explanations and infer which cause is the best. But what does it mean to be the best causal explanation? Darwin utilized from Lyell’s answer to this question, that if you want to explain an event in the remote past, posit causes that are only known from experience to produce the effect in question. Then make an inference to the best explanation. Intelligent Design demonstrates by using this criteria, it is the inference to the best explanation. Even information theorist, Henry Quastler asserts, “the creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”

This was the crux of his argument, but Meyer lists other hallmarks of design.
1) Nested coding of information
2) Files within Fodors Hierarchical Filing system
3) Distributed storage and renewal information molecules.
4) Junk DNA as operating system (see Richard Sternberg on this topic)

The criticism that I could imagine from opponents to ID would be reference to Thomas Kuhn’s objection that we set up the paradigm or rules that determine what language or information is. Thus, we are making a circular argument when we say that a particular arrangement forms a “functional message” because the criteria that determines the rules for a “functional message” are established by us in the first place. While this is true, we cannot do away with the fact that there are different levels of complex information. The question for ID opponents is, given that information processes in DNA are significantly more complex than any software program, can a chancy, naturalistic process account for specified information in DNA? Is it reasonable to infer intelligence given the fact that we only know of intelligence as the source of functionally complex information?

Another objection I can think of brings up the issue of mixing metaphysics with science. Once one probes into questions addressing whether DNA code equates with meaningful statements from human language systems (i.e. computer and verbal communication language), it seems like this involves metaphysics and/or the philosophy of language. Even if it does involve these philosophical areas, I still maintain that ID is making a design inference based on empirical facts, not merely metaphysical assertions.

Debate: Is Intelligent Design Viable?

Intelligent Design: Is it Viable? A debate between Dr. Francisco J. Ayala and Dr. William Lane Craig. Moderated by Dr. Bradley Monton. The debate will occur on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 7 p.m. EST at Indiana University. See the website for more details. I’m really looking forward to this debate because I’m most interested in what Ayala, who is a biology professor and theistic evolutionist, will argue against ID.

I Get to Present on Intelligent Design at the U. of Colorado at Denver’s Sociology Conference

On Monday, November 16th at the University of Colorado at Denver’s Sociology Conference, I will present Intelligent Design as a historical science, which would merit its optional inclusion in science courses. The level of inclusion depends upon the science instructors, as long as it is presented accurately and in a non-proselytizing manner. Many may choose to never mention ID, which if fine. However, I think mentioning ID in an accurate manner would increase critical thinking for students to consider alternative explanations for the presence of information and complex life systems. Moreover, one must never equate with Creationism or any religious claims because as a historical science, it has nothing to say about teleology, the supernatural, God, or the particular nature of the intelligent source. If you want to know more, I can email you some more information.

Infallible Word of God

If the Bible is the infallible word of God, should it violate the law of non-contradiction? I do not think so because absolute truth should not contain any contradiction. The fact that the Bible justifies many contradictory interpretations surrounding various topics such as: salvation, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, views on war, roles of women in society and ministry, the church, and Israel, then it follows that the Bible is not the infallible word of God. Some point to the fact that the U.S. Constitution bears various interpretations, yet yields truth. However, the constitution does not reveal “truth.” It is comprised of a set of ideals that are useful for structuring society. Furthermore, it is not a divinely inspired document that claims absolute truth, such that it cannot be revised. Others claim that ancient greek philosophy also yields a plurality of interpretations, yet does offer some insight and truth. However, the problem remains that ancient philosophers did not claim to possess divine inspiration nor are they prophets bearing “absolute truth.” Therefore, this analogy is false.

For the sake of argument, let’s claim that the Bible is not inerrant, yet still yields truth. Just because a document affords for various interpretations does not mean it is false or does not afford a correct interpretation that can be known. While this may be true, for a God to substantiate eternal consequences based on a dubious, vague, and ambiguous document is inconsistent with his omniscience, omnipotence, and omni-benevolence. A God who meets these qualities would not violate the law of non-contradiction and would make it blatantly obvious (i.e. touching a hot stove is hurtful), that everyone needs to believe a certain world view in order to live a life of freedom and escape eternal separation from God. Many claim that this would cheapen faith, but would it really? I think if it was blatantly obvious that Christianity is true that this would increase the welfare of humanity and would also fulfill the desire of God for all to obtain salvation. Many also claim that God desires for humanity to seek him out and search for truth. If this is the case, then he should not eternally punish those who get it wrong. For to place individuals in an ambiguous world and punish them for not reaching the correct view is unfair.

Morbid Thoughts…

I have traveled a lot this year, which usually entails flying. I’m not afraid of flying in itself and despite the fact that fatalities caused by car crashes significantly outweighs deaths due to plane crashes, my mortality comes to mind every time I fly. For the record, I am not depressed, but I feel like I need to write something about death. Due to my Agnostic stance these days, if something were to ever happen to me and Christianity happens to be true, then I hope those in my life (especially the serious Christians) will not despair, will trust that their God is just, and as such, will deal with me fairly. If another religion is true (i.e. Islam, LDS, JW, almost ad infinitum) then most, if not everyone I know is in trouble. Since we cannot know about the afterlife or the nature of god/gods (by the way, the bible is far from clear about the nature of god), I would hope that if a supernatural being exists, that hell is not a reality. To punish humans for not figuring out a particular truth that rests in an obscure world is sadistic.

Now, it may be true that God exists and will punish those who do not arrive at the proper truth about Him. However, since my reason cannot intellectually support the existence of any God, the reality of the afterlife, prophecy, miracles, ect… I cannot believe any religious system based on fear or the desire for an insurance policy. Agnosticism is where I stand as far as my religious beliefs, so if anything were to happen to me, I hope my family and friends can rest assured that I have enjoyed my life and will not despair over my existence/non-existence in the afterlife (if such a thing exists). I encourage everyone to live a life that Socrates endorses, a life that is continually examined. Pursue philosophy, reason, science, and love others.

Secular Humanism

My world view most closely aligns with the tenets of secular humanism.

Secular humanism describes a world view with the following elements and principles (more info can be found here):

Secular Humanism is a term which has come into use in the last thirty years to describe a world view with the following elements and principles:

A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.

Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.

A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.

A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.

A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.

A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.

Reason, evidence, scientific method – A commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.

Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.

Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

This life – A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.

Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.

Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

As for the supernatural, secular humanists accept a world view or philosophy called naturalism, in which the physical laws of the universe are not superseded by non-material or supernatural entities such as demons, gods, or other “spiritual” beings outside the realm of the natural universe. Supernatural events such as miracles (in which physical laws are defied) and psi phenomena, such as ESP, telekinesis, etc., are not dismissed out of hand, but are viewed with a high degree of skepticism.

Typically, secular humanists do not rely upon gods or other supernatural forces to solve their problems or provide guidance for their conduct. They rely instead upon the application of reason, the lessons of history, and personal experience to form an ethical/moral foundation and to create meaning in life. Secular humanists look to the methodology of science as the most reliable source of information about what is factual or true about the universe we all share, acknowledging that new discoveries will always alter and expand our understanding of it and perhaps change our approach to ethical issues as well. In any case their cosmic outlook draws primarily from human experiences and scientific knowledge.

Why I Struggle With Christians and Their God

Here are some reasons why I am having a difficult time with most (not all) Christians:

1) They seem to worship their theology more than Jesus. For whatever reason, this appears to be especially true for folks that come from a reformed theology. Theology is ambiguous and the Bible may equally defend contradictory theological positions (i.e. Calvinism and Arminianism).

2) They use prayer as an excuse for inaction. They’re waiting for God to do his thing, but they aren’t willing to step out in faith and obedience. Think about it, how many Christians do you know who actually help the poor, help someone in their community, or minister to non-believers?

3) Christianity is highly consumeristic. What happens when your preferred teacher doesn’t teach? What happens when your preferred worship leader doesn’t lead? What happens when you don’t like the music? It’s almost the end of one’s world if church does not cater to all their needs or preferences.

4) Many are fake and only are nice to you because they feel obligated by their God. Try walking away from faith and you really see who your true friends are.

5) They think they’re better than other people. They view non-believers as “those people,” who are rebellious, unenlightened, deceived, and without truth.

6) We put spiritual sounding language on things to make them sound better.
What we say: “I’ve fasted and prayed really hard about this, so this is what I think we should do. What we mean: “I’m unsure about my decision and too scared of conflict to state my wishes plainly, so I’m going to use power language so you can’t argue with me and I get my way.”

7) Christians belittle people and then expect them to listen about Jesus’ love for them. Disagree with people, fine, but please treat them like they’re a human being.

As for God, 1) He condemns all of humanity for the sins of Adam & Eve. 2) He commanded genocide (the decimation of all men, women, children, and animals of several nations). 3) He allows senseless suffering. 4) He supposedly sent his Son who is 100% human and 100% divine, yet no one can make sense of this paradox known as the hypostatic union. 5) He sent the Holy Spirit to lead the faithful, however, the Spirit repeatedly fails to do this. And no, the answer cannot always be that someone just doesn’t have enough faith. 6) He will also judge everyone based upon what conclusions they reach about His existence even though He appeared during one of the worse times in history (ancient times). 7) He does not follow His own commands. Now, is this the kind of God one should place their trust in?

Ignorance

I am processing some thoughts and would appreciate feedback on the comments below.

Ignorance = those who place much faith in their version of god/gods, which burgeons deeper when faith in god/gods coalesces with arrogant certainty. This concept also applies to strong Atheists and those who place trust in the noumenal realm. This includes non-theistic religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age beliefs. As a result, the negative aspects of the human condition escalates, which often involves subjugation of the other. For example, whether intentionally or not, when an Atheist or Christian views the opponent as inferior, irrational, unintelligent, or severs communication with those who disagree with them, they contribute to the human drive to lord over others. Ultimately, this proliferates their kingdom of comfort, which induces despair.

Inspired by Hegel’s master/slave example, I think subjugating others from a standpoint of arrogant certainty conflates the human condition to assert power over the other. When one does this to another, they think they place themselves above and thus demand respect from the subjugated. However, the one subjugating the other cannot truly gain respect from a subjugated individual because they achieve true respect from an equal. In addition to the kingdom of comfort pursuit, this scenario also leads to despair.

Theological beliefs fall under the noumenal realm, which cannot provide knowledge about reality. However, I assert that just because one ventures into a non-empirical world does not mean their assertion cannot be true. It just means that non-empirical assertions may not yield a tautologous statement or claim about reality. Therefore, statements that refer to a realm that transcends the limits of sense-experience cannot have any true significance. As A.J. Ayer says “a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false.” Speculating about the noumenal world is fascinating, but cannot produce falsifiable claims. As such, one should not hold a high level of faith or certainty about the noumenal realm.

Bible Scholar Says Ethics Are Not From The Bible

Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University Of Sheffield, England
September 2009

There seems to have been much debate recently in the media about atheism. Perhaps Professor Dawkins and other vociferous authors have to be thanked for this. But it’s a good thing, if only to counter some really ignorant prejudices about the values of those who do not believe in supernatural beings that influence their life. We can start by noting that atheism has little to do with secularism: most Western nations are both religious and secular. Democracy requires both: religion is one of those beliefs that secular society permits because gods are not registered voters and do not offer themselves at the ballot box and cannot speak in public. Next, the horrible phrase “people of faith” (like “people of color”) implies that atheists have no faith, whereas they do; in fact, they put their faith in certain human values—individual liberty, reason, toleration, human autonomy, science. I don’t see that an atheist’s belief in these is much different in kind from a belief in an invisible and sovereign being (or whatever) that ultimately determines the nature and destiny of everything. Except that it is always open to verification. If it’s wrong, we expect to find out some time. Meanwhile, we should believe in something…..

But what about ethics? After all, religion is not about whether you believe in gods. This is merely metaphysics. What defines religion is the belief that these beings require you to do something about it rather than leave them in peace (and allow them to do the same to you). I repeatedly hear advocates of religion asserting that it is religion that gives humans ethics that bestow value on human life. I have rarely heard anything so ridiculous in my life. So let’s look at ethics in the (Hebrew) Bible.

There are various systems determining human behavior. The best known comprises, the “commandments” or “laws,” supposedly dictated by the invisible god and stipulating that humans should not kill, steal, commit adultery or worship any god but this one, etc. What are the reasons for such behavior? That it is good to obey divine commands—additional motivation being provided by threatened consequences of neglecting to do so. However, “only obeying orders” was summarily dismissed as a defense at the Nuremberg trials and although in some circumstances one can still plead “higher authority” as a defense against charges of misconduct, these pleas do not constitute an assertion of ethical behavior: they are just a get-out where one has clearly behaved unethically.

Religious believers may accuse me here of parody. But no: this is no parody; this is what much of the biblical “ethics” are — rules that are imposed and expected to be obeyed. They are good rules because they are divine rules—and gods are good, or at least the god in the Bible. But ethics is about doing what is good because it is intrinsically good. It is children whom we simply command, and (at least until recently) punish for neglect of our commands because they do not as yet know better. But we are not children, and in fact, many Jews and Christians do behave ethically, obeying some commandments and not others. In doing so, they follow some principle of ethics because they are not children but adults.
So let’s take the wisdom literature as exemplified by Proverbs. Here we can find something closer to a rational system. The literary convention of parental advice to children can be ignored: Wisdom is not commanded but recommended as reasonable because it is in conformity with the way the world was created (this is what I take to be the point of Proverbs 8:22 : “Yahweh created me at the beginning of his work”). The universe, it runs, was created with a moral as well as a natural order, and right behavior consists of discerning and respecting that order. Here we surely have something approaching a proper code of ethics (not, in fact, so far from Stoicism). Unfortunately, it has two major flaws. The less serious flaw is that it does not work because what Proverbs recommends as good does not actually bring the promised reward, nor does its opposite bring punishment. The writers of Job and Qoheleth both seem to have acknowledged this but have no alternative to offer other than to respectively suffer or enjoy life without much understanding of what “good behavior” means. In addition, the writer of the Job story makes it very clear (via the mouth of the Satan) that good behavior is supposed to be disinterested (now that is a piece of real ethics!), and that rewarding it negates this virtue. Yet the more serious flaw is the tendency (mostly outside Proverbs) to equate this “wisdom” to “torah” (divine instruction), and then, to make it worse, to define “torah” as a written corpus of commandments. Hence the wise person, as Psalm 1 has it, is one who meditates on this continually, rather than the one who thinks, reads, or reflect. Ethics out of a can.

And the prophets—so beloved of biblical ethicists? Joel, Obadiah, Nahum, Haggai, Zechariah, Habakkuk we can dispose of. Elsewhere we encounter rants against cultic irregularity (=bigotry, denial of human rights), xenophobia (ditto), exhortation to follow Torah (we’ve been here already). Some protests against social abuse, I will concede. But these critiques are hardly original, and being religiously grounded should not be confused with being religiously rationalized. If you want to challenge social or royal norms, you really do have to appeal to a divinity because nothing else counts. And why does nothing else count? Because the Bible is culturally totalitarian—unsurprisingly, because it emanates from a totalitarian world of monarchic societies. The development of monarchic religion in the Bible is hardly a supreme religious insight. Rather, it parallels the growth of ever-larger political units. Instead of local city-rulers fighting for supremacy (and their gods likewise), a supreme, if remote, “king of kings” controls everything (always through officials, of course), the semblance of world order that this emperor celebrates being reflected is the cosmic order governed by a supreme deity. (Plato’s monotheism, by contrast, has to be explained differently).

Western civilization, then, does not get ethics from the Bible (and I would say, not even from the New Testament, but I don’t have room to argue that. Go figure.) Ethics develop in a society where individuals have to make their own moral judgments about intrinsic goodness. In fifth-century Athens, we find Athenian dramatists using traditional myths and legends to explore ethical ambiguity, and especially the conflicts between duty to family city and nation. These are precisely the issues that will have confronted those Athenian citizens called upon to act as judges of their fellows in civic trials. In such a task there are no instructions from the gods, and indeed, no clear answers. Admittedly, the “good” was essentially political, and neither Plato nor Aristotle escaped this restriction. But it was a very good start. Where humans are (in theory) equal, and where political power lies within a citizen body, only educated judgment can hinder mob rule, while abdication of responsibility can easily lead to the return of monarchy. The moral lessons to be learned from the history of the Greek cities (and their Roman successors) can teach as much about democracy as the tragedies in which the heroes are typically caught between demands that are irreconcilable. Theocracy or totalitarianism actually triumphed. It is found first with Alexander, then the Caesars, and then the Roman Catholic Church. But for the time being, democracy, individual freedom, and ethics, are with us. Perhaps that is what we are fighting for in Afghanistan and Iraq. Or perhaps not. I am not sure the Bible would worry too much about torture: its god is quite comfortable with the idea.
Oh for the simplicity of a god to tell us what is right and wrong! If we read Genesis 2–3 in a certain way (the orthodox Christian way, for example) we have to conclude that when we try to do what we think is right, rather than simply obey a divine command, however inscrutable, we fall (and we get punished in a big way). “Doing what is right in our own eyes”—what heresy! Can any theology be more adamantly opposed to “ethics” than this?

Now, I treasure the Bible. And I even think that religion does have many advantages. But ethics is not one of religion’s gifts to humanity, and the Bible cannot serve a modern democracy as a moral guide—unless of course we decide ourselves, on or own ethical principles, which bits of it we will follow and which ones we will not. Come to think of it, though, isn’t this really what most of its believers actually do? So why not come clean and stop pretending that our Western culture is built on “biblical values”: for, thank god, it isn’t!

Stoicism & Logical Positivism

I very much appeal to Stoicism. Founded by Zeno of Citium (Cyprus), this school of philosophy teaches self-control and detachment from distracting, irrational emotions. This allows one to pursue clear thinking and interpret reality from a more neutral position. In addition, Stoicism fortifies individuals to pursue virtue, wisdom, and integrity of character. By mastering passions and emotions, Stoicism claims the possibility of overcoming discord from the world and find peace within oneself. Greek philosophers such as Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and later Roman thinkers such as Cicero, Seneca the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, Cato the Elder, Cato the Younger, and Epictetus are associated with Stoicism.

It is important to note that the Stoics did not seek to extinguish emotions. I think it is imperative that individuals address their emotions, but ultimately resort to developing clear judgement and inner calm through diligent practice of logic, reflection, and concentration. The foundation of Stoic ethics points to goodness that rests in the state of the soul itself; in wisdom and self-control. I would rather err on the side of following reason where it leads than passion and speculative feelings.

As for logical positivism, the positivists rejected transcendental metaphysics as meaningless assertions since one could not verify metaphysics through experience. While earlier critics of metaphysics were content to describe it as empty, useless, or unscientific, the logical positivists took over from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus the rejection of metaphysics as meaningless. The propositions of metaphysics, they argued, are neither true nor false; they are wholly devoid of significance. While I appreciate the logical positivists limitations upon metaphysics, I also would not go as far as they do and call it meaningless or devoid of significance. As a result, I think more research and discussion should continue to occur within metaphysics (i.e. God, freewill, the soul, ect…) because it is possible to speculate upon metaphysical ideas. Just because one cannot verify metaphysics empirically or assign a definitive truth value to it does not mean that one should render these entities as meaningless. However, when discerning truth, I think one should favor empirical and tautologous information over metaphysical entities.

Lost Sheep

Luke 15:3-7
“Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it?  When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  When he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”

The parable of the lost sheep (and the prodigal son) remain beautiful images of redemption. Interestingly, those who obey and believe hail as sons and daughters of the promise, while of others, Jesus says: ”but you do not believe because you are not my sheep”  (John 10:26).  According to this verse, “being his sheep” in the pen precedes having faith in Christ. For such sheep have already believed in the Lord as the Old Testament had revealed him (a la Abraham). Such people are already in the flock before they even hear the gospel, having been justified as Abraham was. Upon hearing their Messiah speak, they recognize his voice and put their faith in him. It is clear from this verse that God deems who belong in His pen and who does not. It does not make any sense to me why God would create anyone destined for eternal punishment. The more loving thing to do would be to not create at all or create a different scenario that would not necessitate such barbarism (i.e. the heaven and hell dichotomy. Also see most of the OT).

I think part of my wandering away from Christian faith points to the issue that it does not seem like God chases after lost sheep. I do not see an active God, who convicts non-believers or transforms many believers. Combined with this experience, reading and speaking with intelligent Agnostic/Atheists showed me that they have valid reasons for non-belief, which I came to agree with over time. Thus, I cannot defend Christianity as the absolute truth, but will admit that I miss the community life, the comfort of thinking that God exists and cares about my day-to-day life, having a larger purpose for my life deemed by the Creator, and having faith in an afterlife (despite this groundless assertion).

If Christianity is true and God plans to “save me,” then this will come to fruition. If He exists and I am not included with “the saved,” then perhaps I’m a tool in his mysterious, grand plan for the universe. I find it disheartening that so many Christians are very arrogant towards non-believers and treat them poorly. Here is my two cents on how to convince someone else that your view of the world is the best. First, don’t make them feel stupid or inferior. Second, find some common ground and respect where the other is coming from. At least try to understand their perspective and actually listen to what they are saying. Third, don’t write them off and give up on them merely because they do not share your beliefs. I have experienced many Christians write me off and make me feel like I’m not worth their time. Maybe they are right, though? If saving people is the most important priority, they better not waste too much time on those struggling or not believing. I must say that it’s interesting that I find more affirmation and encouragement to use my strengths from non-believers than I ever have with believers. Oh right, I’m a woman and should only expect to take care of greeting people at the door on Sunday’s, watching children, and preparing food. Silly me.

Anyway, while I am sad about causing pain for the Christians in my life who care and remain truly bothered about my beliefs, in the same vein, I value honesty and cannot believe at this time. Even Os Guinness says, “we should be clear about where doubt leads to as it grows into unbelief.” Even though I disagree with Guinness’s definitions of ‘unbelief’ as “a willful refusal to believe” or a “deliberate decision to disobey,” I think it has more to do with the fact that I cannot understand or experience God’s presence and nature in the way I once knew it. Could my current stance change? Certainly. I’m not saying like some believers and non-believers, “my mind is made up, nothing can convince me otherwise.” For now, I just remain unconvinced, but this does not mean that I am forever an Agnostic.

Fundamentally, I have major problems believing in a God who is behind the makings of the potential for evil/sin; let alone eternal punishment. Furthermore, the bible does not portray a God who is consistent in his morality/character, nor does it give any evidence of being an objective moral guide. As for believing in the resurrection and answering the question about why people would die for a lie, the resurrection is an extraordinary claim with very little evidence. I’m sure some people believed in mythical literature/oral traditions given all the pagan religions and probably even died for their beliefs. However, just because some people die for beliefs, does not lend truth-value to them. Today many people die for their beliefs, of which not all can be true.

Despite my inimical thoughts and feelings towards Christ, I do find much beauty in Scripture and think it does have at times, piercing words that answer the despair of the human condition. For instance, people must love others including their enemies and sacrifice for others, especially the least of these. For in this one finds freedom from bitterness and arresting self-absorption. Humans need community, to sacrifice for one another, and have a purpose. I think Jesus meets these fundamental needs for a lot of people. Although, I do not think Jesus’ teachings are unique to him or could not be found elsewhere. While part of me wishes I could persist in my comfortable faith, a larger part of me knows that I value the truth over comfort. Aside from some reasons given for non-belief, I do not experience God or think that He changes anyone. It’s what people believe that changes them, not God. While I do not despise religion nor work to derail anyone from their faith, I merely cannot defend any religion as the best explanation for reality. For now, I can support science, reason, and secular values (see Center for Inquiry for more info).

Dialogue with a Christian

This is a dialogue between myself and a Christian.

Christian:

First, is life more than chemistry?

There are two possible answers:

1) No

If the answer is “no”, then what is the bother?

The need to communicate is only a chemical reaction.

Whether the communication is successful or not is irrelevant.

Our lives, and loves do not exist as we think they do because

none of it is “real”…

It is just chemistry

There is nothing to strive for, no reason to accept or deny.

No value to: gain, loss, relationships, efforts, success or failure.

We become nothing more than rust.

2) Yes

If the answer is “yes”, then what is it?

Is there a “spiritual” component to our existence?

If there is, then there is a whole can of worms that comes with it.

God

Heaven

Hell

Angels

Demons

Witches

Spells

etc., etc.,

Who wants to believe that????

NONE OF US DO.

Me (Sarah):  There is certainly more to life than chemistry. Science is the means by which we understand the natural world, so I would say that it is a tool to understanding reality. There may be something greater like god/gods, angels, ect…but, given the inconclusive evidence as to whether these entities exist, it is best to lack belief until further evidence is revealed. I think the pursuit for truth using science and reason is a worthy purpose. Meaning arises from being in community, searching for truth, and aligning oneself with something they are passionate about. Why and how must it be the case that God is the sole bearer of meaning?

As for your second option, I think most people want to believe in option 2 because it brings comfort to the unknown. Just because we cannot figure out how consciousness works or life’s origins does not mean one should automatically assume god (god of the gaps argument). Besides, even if one does assumes god/gods to exist, they have no way in saying which one/one’s truly exist because there are thousands of gods that humanity supposedly experiences. If one true God did exist and who desired all to escape hell, wouldn’t he make sure all of his creation knew about the one true God? I think so.

Christian:

Modern logic would tell us that “chemistry” is the correct answer,

or at least that is what we have been led to believe by the

“scientific” community. The trouble with scientific answers is that they ignore the work of one of the twentieth centuries greatest

mathematicians: Kurt Gödel was able to prove that there are things that are true that cannot be proven. (A rather provocative result)

The ramifications of his work reverberate through one

specific sliver of the scientific world: Artificial Intelligence

One of the implications of Gödels work is that it is not

possible for a machine (electrical, mechanical, or chemical)

to possess creative intelligence, like “us”.

No machine can exceed it’s program.

Unlike “us”.

Sarah:

Indeed, there are limitations to understanding intelligence, consciousness, thoughts, ect… However, arguing from human consciousness to God is problematic. Even assuming that theism can adequately explain human consciousness while atheism cannot does not follow because there are alternatives to theism (i.e. agnosticism and various forms of skepticism). Who is to say that these world views could not better explain consciousness? Besides, take for example, pantheism, deism, and the myriad breeds of polytheism, which have abounded (and, to varying degrees, still do) in the dominant religions and philosophies of the East. How might it be that, say, the god of deism or the Hindu god Vishnu (or even the Norse god Thor) could not adequately explain it? The argument from human consciousness to God fails to supply any information concerning how God, presumably a transcendent being, supposedly brought about the phenomenon at issue, i.e., human consciousness. Hence, it is an explanation, which is grossly incomplete (assuming one could even properly regard it to be explanation at all, which is certainly debatable). By failing to elucidate the matter of just how, exactly, God allegedly accomplished the feat in question; AHC implicitly proclaims it to be a “great mystery.” But in the words of Theodore Drange, “The purpose of explanation is to dispel mystery, not introduce it.”

Christian:

Lastly, “religion” does not come from reason, or human need.

Religions exist because of encounters that humans have had

with non corporeal beings who apparently had NAMES.

Typically the being was part of a group.

This group claimed to be the “sons of”

some higher more elite group

and they were the “sons of”

.. until you get to ONE at the top.

Those individuals who claim to have had encounters with

such “beings” usually dramatically change their lives, their

hopes, their values, their entire life path.

They suddenly feel that this being is far more important than

anything they have ever encountered.

Some of them appear to be imbued with “powers”…

Sarah:

There are thousands if not millions of gods that humans have created to help them deal with the unknown and difficulties of life. Why is it the case that many people do not experiences transcendent powers? I think the evidence for the thousands of religions, gods, and brands of Christianity bears strong support for the argument that religion and god are a human made phenomenon. If an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent god existed who wanted every human being to worship and serve him in order to manifest his plans for creation and save people from eternal hell, it would be clear who this true god is.

“With God On Our Side” by, Straylight Run

Originally by Bob Dylan, Starlight Run has a version of this song that is very powerful and moving.

“With God On Our Side”

Oh my name it ain’t nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

I’ve learned to hate others
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s then we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

When the Second World War, boys
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they died
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

But now we got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

In a many dark hours
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
My words fill the air
They fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

Philosophy Lectures at UCD This Fall!

The first meeting will be Tuesday September 1st, 5:30pm in the Honi Haber Library (inside the philosophy department Plaza M 108). The philosophy department’s library is the first door on the right inside the office.

What is faith? How do people acquire faith – is it a priori or a posteriori? What beliefs are entailed in faith? What justifications do people have for faith/belief? Are faith-based arguments valid-how so? Or why not?

Andrew Winters, M.A. in Philosophy and Religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies, will be discussing “Varieties of Faith” – epistemic and religious. So please think of questions to stimulate
discussion relating to A priori/a posteriori notions of god(s) as well as your beliefs and why you hold them. And if you know anyone that might be interested, bring ‘em along! Anyone with an open mind is welcome with a UC Denver student. Refreshments provided.

Also, just a heads up – the Philosophy department is hosting a few lectures in the fall, so check them out:

Fall 2009

Wed. Sept. 2nd at 2:30pm-4:00pm.
Liz Stillwagon, SUNY Buffalo,
“Biosymbols: Symbols in Life and Mind”

Mon. Oct. 5th at 2:30pm-4:00pm
Frederic Bender, UC Colorado Springs,
“Ecocide, Peak Oil, and Deep Ecology”

Wed. Oct. 21st at 2:30pm-4:00pm
Mitzi Lee, UC Boulder,
“Justice and the Law in Aristotle’s Moral Theory”

Wed. Nov. 18th at 2:30pm-4:00pm
Candice S. Shelby, UC Denver,
“Shifting Conceptual Spaces”

Iconoclastic Ruminations

Christians claim that God is a perfect, necessary being. As a perfect and necessary being, He is also omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. God created humans to subsist in relationship with Him and carry out His purposes. He desires humans to worship and serve him, which transpires through one’s participation in Godly community, loving & sacrificing for others (Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” Luke 6:27-36), participating as stewards of Creation, aligning daily for the redemptive cause of Christ, and existing as a luminous presence of His Will. An integral part of knowing God, His character, and ourselves, materializes through the living Word of God revealed in the Bible. When in relationship with Jesus Christ, one will not only find freedom from sin and death, but will usher oneself into a life that encompasses a purpose centered in serving God and others. For God does not desire that believers solely focus on the escape into eternal life promised to those who believe in Jesus as their savior, but to carry out His redemptive purposes here and now. God desires all humanity to surrender their lives to Jesus Christ because freedom abounds in a life that is pouring out to God and others.

With this said, why don’t I believe that Christianity reigns as the absolute truth and why am I defending Agnostic Atheism in this post? For the record, my beliefs are under construction and will be for a long time. The reason why I am defending Agnostic Atheism is to test objections to Christianity and to demonstrate that the God of the Bible does not corroborate with a perfect, necessary being, which includes omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence. To clarify terms, an Agnostic Atheist is Atheistic because he/she does not believe in the existence of any deity and is also Agnostic because he or she does not claim to have definitive knowledge that a deity does not exist. In contrast, the Agnostic Theist does believe that one or more deities exists, but does not claim to have definitive knowledge of this. Here are some reasons why Agnostic Atheism may be more plausible than Christian Theism:

1) God created humanity to know Him, worship Him, and carry out His purposes for Creation. He created Adam & Eve and gave them one simple rule, which He knew from eternity that would break. Thus, ushering in fallen humanity, original sin, and the heaven/hell dichotomy. For a mysterious reason, God created humanity with “freewill,” give them rules He knew they would fail to uphold, and punish those who fail to believe in Him/Jesus Christ (for those living after Jesus’ ministry). It is often argued that only true love may exist in the presence of freewill and thus, this is the best possible world (see Leibniz) that God could have created. If this is true, what does this indicate about God? He knowingly created people destined for unbelief, hardens hearts like Pharaoh, and reveals Himself through convoluted avenues such as: the Bible, supposed miracles, and mystical experiences.

If God truly desired His character and purposes to manifest in the lives of humans, He could reveal Himself in obvious ways (i.e. spelling bible verses with the stars and appearing to everyone like Paul on the Damascus road), which maintains respect for human freewill. Besides, if God loves human freewill so much, why damn those who fail to arrive at the proper belief in Him? It remains highly suspicious that God could not have set up the world void of eternal punishment. Nietzsche says it best, “a god who is infinitely perfect and who does not make sure his creatures understand his intention-could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of humankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made about the nature of truth?”

2) The Bible along with all “holy books” are dangerous because they lack an objective foundation. How does one know that they possess “the correct interpretation?” Why trust the Bible, which demonstrates a God who, according to the Bible, is directly responsible for many mass-murders, rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse and killing, not to mention the killing of unborn children. I propose that abortion would be supported by the God of the Bible because the probability that unwanted children accept Christ is much lower given the situations they often end up in, while the salvation rate of aborted fetuses remains at 100%. As we see in the Bible, killing is not always wrong even though one of the ten commandments says “Thou shalt not murder.”

3) The following is from a friend, Joel:

Why is it that there exists so many of these groups (referring to the 6 different Christian groups at Metro/UCD)? Shouldn’t there only be one group since they all agree on the same “infallible” book? It seems to me that the very existence of so many groups that in fact, do not agree with each other enough to be a single a group hints at the idea that the bible is just as man-made as the Illiad or Huck Finn. If “Truth is multi-faceted”…..how so? there is True, False…and what? ”Why do atheists not agree with each other either?” This makes some pretty basic assumptions that are misconceptions. Atheist means, ‘a lack of a believe in a god/gods’. That’s it. Other opinions and ideals held individually therein, are immaterial to identifying as an Atheist. On the other hand, there are Christians that base their beliefs on what is supposed to be an ‘infallible’ book which is fraught with terrible and incoherent implications. The books of the bible were voted upon and subjectively selected for various, mostly sexist and racist, reasons. I invite you to actually respond to these objections than to just dismiss them as simplistic.

At the last student groups fair, Joel was speaking to a Christian group about the passage where Jesus told us to hate our parents (and other siblings) and the Christian could not explain this passage. Joel says “the comparison argument doesn’t hold water and still leaves us with caring more about a mystical world (that probably doesn’t exist) and the physical one (that we have evidence for existing). That isn’t morality. If it is true that there is a heaven and it is so much better than here, than I ask, very seriously, why Christians just don’t kill themselves in mass numbers….?”

Christians & non-Christians:  Before you comment, think twice about using ad hominem responses. If you do, I will ask you to edit any comments calling myself or Joel stupid, simplistic, irrational, accuse me of not learning enough from seminary, tell me that I just don’t like Christianity, or any other ad hominem attack. Utilizing ad hominem responses only demonstrates your lack of argument and maturity, so please use concise arguments and stick to the topic. Also, assuming that I am trying to elude Christianity merely to support a diametrically opposed lifestyle is not true. Even if I did, there are ways to do that without rejecting Christianity. Essentially, I desire to get at the truth, remain as honest as I can, communicate as clearly as possible, and learn from others.

Remain Skeptical

Even though God’s inerrant word describes plants existing before the sun, believers offer an interpretation of Genesis 1 cosmology to explain this impossibility. Their interpretation persists in the notion that God merely created, but did not demonstrate the process of Creation; nor did he offer a scientific theory. In a similar vein, should one believe that a donkey talked and dead men came back to life? If so, why? Why conclude that the fish swallowing Jonah is clearly figurative while a man returning to life after death qualifies as a literal phenomenon?

Many Christians who accept scientific and logical conclusions will attempt to shrug off absurdities (i.e. Jonah and the fish, humans resurrecting, animals talking, ect….) by claiming that such instances subsist as figurative or metaphorical. A solid reason for remaining skeptical towards the Bible points to the fact that primitive minds spread fantastic and superstitious stories in a time when humans understood virtually nothing in the universe.

Thoughts on “The Sacredness of Questioning Everything” by David Dark

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by, David Dark attempts to usher freedom to the process of questioning God. This work takes aim at awakening those in dead religion, which discourages questions and also offers comfort to those who swim in doubt. David Dark claims that “the God of the Bible not only encourages questions; the God of the Bible demands them. If that were not so, we wouldn’t live in a world of such rich, God-given complexity in which wide-eyed wonder is part and parcel of the human condition. The possibility of redemption and revolution depends on the questions we ask of God, governments, media, and everyday economies.” While I think Dark succeeds in offering a thoughtful and revitalizing view of God, religion, skepticism, and culture, I conclude that analytical questions often cause devastating answers to the absolute truth of any particular religion. Furthermore, the book does not address challenging questions nor does it define sacredness. The reader is left wondering what does not fall under sacredness if it truly involves the questioning process and all that we do in life.

“The Bible ceases to be a catalogue of all the things one has to believe in order to not go to hell. Instead, it’s a multifaceted collection of people crying out to God—a collection of close encounters with the God who is present, somehow, in those very cries. “  P. 18

I agree that the Bible is a collection of letters, stories, poems, laments, commands, and metaphors. However, I do not agree that the Bible ceases to be a “catalogue of all the things one has to believe in order to avoid hell.” Perhaps it is not a catalogue, but it is very clear that one must believe in Jesus Christ as their savior and strive to live a life that reflects a relationship with Him. While God may be present in all the cries and laments, how does one know this? How does one know that God cares?

When serious questions arise about the historical reliability of the Bible, the incompatible Gospel accounts, and the contradictory moral nature of God in the Old Testament, Christianity faces great difficulty in maintaining absolute truth. As Niezsche said, “a god who is infinitely perfect and who does not make sure his creatures understand his intention-could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of humankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made about the nature of truth?”

“Christianity, far from being a tradition in which doubts and questions are suppressed in favor of uncritical, blind faith, began to assume the form of a robust culture in which anything can be asked and everything can be said.  The call to worship is a call to complete candor and radical questioning.” P. 18

I agree with David Dark that Christianity must remain open to questioning, for blind faith merely yields a superficial belief system, which will not last when arduous times arrive.

G.K. Chesterton claims, “the NT portrays a God who by being wholly present in the dying cry of Jesus of Nazareth, even doubted and questioned himself.”  P. 19

May Jesus genuinely doubt or question himself? The typical response points to the possibility that He chose to suspend His omniscient powers at certain moments. Even if this remains the case,  the difference stands vast between Jesus and bona fide humanity. Therefore, Jesus’ nature does not truly inhabit human nature and his sacrifice on the cross does not suffice.

The religious impulse begins with a sense of awe, a sense of not knowing the fullness of what we’re looking at.” P. 22 and “Religion can never be, strictly speaking, a self-contained issue because our religion is nothing more (and nothing less) than the way we order and understand our worlds. It’s not just what we mean; it’s how we mean. Our religion is our economy of meaning, and like every economy, it can always do with a little deepening.” P.35

Precisely. I think religion arose from human uncertainty and the need to make sense of the world. When humanity cannot find answers, God becomes a created idol in order to make sense of that which one remains ignorant about. Thousands of years ago, humanity would explain natural phenomena (i.e. lightening, rain, ect…) with divine reasons. As education and scientific progress unravels throughout history, natural explanations continue to explain away phenomena typically attributed to the divine. Even if a God or gods exist, human knowledge of God, His nature, and involvement with the world remain highly speculative. Therefore, it is best to remain Agnostic about God and rely more on science, which reports on what one can know from observation, testability, and falsifiability. As for religious fundamentalism, I agree whole heartedly with the point that fundamentalism equals bad religion. For blind, fundamentalist faith persists and fosters the highest levels of ignorance, which leads to an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy. When this occurs, loving thy neighbor becomes isolating, defaming, or even hating those who claim opposing worldviews.

“In the name of maintaining what feels like an emotional equilibrium, we lose the habit of asking ourselves hard questions about our everyday practices and the worlds we fund and perpetuate with our lives, our religion, becomes little more than a dim-witted maintenance of the status quo. We develop a resistance to anything and anyone who calls our lives into question. Our religious faith, what’s left of it, becomes difficult to distinguish from the sentimental coziness of the warm electric blanket, an anesthetizing presence in our lives.” P. 43

The attitude described here represents a majority of religious people. Ask most people why they believe their religion is the truth above all other worldviews and they will usually give you emotional reasons alone. Very few Christians know how to answer tough questions except with the mystery card. I think if Christians follow David Dark’s advice and ask hard questions, they will find that their religion lacks explanatory power.

“Religion is the whole deal, so it is clearly an exercise in futility to locate the place where religion intersects with, say politics, as if there are a fixed number of interesting spots where religions actually interfaces with the everyday world. Instead, our world is all religion all the time. The exclusive categories of modernism—economics, politics, and so on-do not, in fact, work. They’re just different terms for the same thing, the slippery stuff of human existence. Religion is what we have, what there is. Religion is the air we breathe. It’s our immediate and demanding subject matter.” P. 39

Hmmm, “our world is religion all the time.” So, when people kill each other in the name of their God, that’s religion. When people go through their daily routine, that is religion. If religion is truly our world all the time, then it’s far from obvious whether religion stands for good or evil. It’s also interesting that the author does not want to distinguish between economics, politics, and modernism. How do these categories not work? And what is a better alternative? David Dark never says.

“It should be obvious that our sense of what is sacred is tragically deficient if it remains closed to all but the most familiar people, places, and ideas. If we aren’t reaching towards a fresh understanding of the world through the questions we ask, we remain pretty well zombified in the cold comfort of a dead religiosity. Fresh questions and new acts of imagination are our primary means to encounter love and liveliness, to discover integrity and authenticity. Without them, we’re pretty well done for. We have to exercise and exorcise our imagination with questions. “

Indeed, questions need to advance and no one should waste their mind in thoughtless, groundless absolutism. Fresh questions keep the mind sharp and often spawns new, innovative ideas that potentially change lives, and sometimes even the course of history. I fully support imagination and questions. I just believe when challenging, deep questions emanate,  all religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, ect….) fail to establish themselves as the best explanation of reality. For more details on why, see this post.

The Culture’s Desire For The Masses

God & The Old Testament

A friend told me today that her pastor teaches that God did not command Israel to obliterate other nations, but rather, God allowed them to think that He commanded them to do it. Or in other words, God knew the Israelites would fight other nations regardless of His commands, so God handed them over to killing others. Oy Vey! I cannot wait to ask how this pastor knows this and what Scripture verses teach this view. If God did not command the following verses, then how does one know what God actually commanded opposed to what humans think God commanded?

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir’gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per’izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. (Deut. 7:1–2)

“…in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes…”(Deut. 20:16)

“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” – Numbers 31:17-18

Some Thoughts on Intelligent Design

After attending the Discovery Institute seminar, I can confirm that many ID supporters believe in some form of special creation. I cannot speak for all of the Discovery Institute fellows, but out of those who presented at the seminar, all believed in creation. However, even if every ID supporter believed in creation, which I know all do not, this remains an extraneous point. Hopefully in the near future, both sides of the debate will focus more on the actual arguments for and against ID, instead of deviating in ad hominem distractions. For more on what ID really argues go here. Certainly, it is true that many ID proponents falsely jump from ID to Christian Theism, even though arguments for ID fail to support any particular God or gods. Overall, the following represent some of the stronger arguments for ID: fine-tuning, origin of life from non-life, the Kalam, and the presence of information content in DNA.

Additionally, here are some points I find most challenging for Naturalism:

1) What does it mean for a natural organism to function properly? Something can only function properly when there is a purpose that it serves. It seems that any thing devoid of intelligence cannot act from or have a purpose unless that purpose is derived from an intelligent agent or something determining its purpose.

2) The inability of naturalism to account for immaterial realities such as right & wrong, and consciousness.

3) Even if the universe is spatially infinite, I do not understand how it is possible for undirected, random natural processes to construct information content such as a computer program or DNA. It is like putting all the necessary pieces of a plane in a box and having it shake for eternity. This would not construct a plane.

Here is an interesting argument against materialism presented by Bruce Gordon:

•P1. Materialism is the view that the sum and substance of everything that exists is exhausted by physical objects and processes and whatever supervenes causally upon them.

•P2. The explanatory resources of materialism are therefore restricted to material objects, causes, events and processes.

•P3. Neither nonlocal quantum correlations nor (in light of nonlocalizability) the identity of the fundamental constituents of material reality can be explained or characterized if the explanatory constraints of materialism are preserved.

•P4. These quantum phenomena require an explanation.

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•C. Therefore, materialism/naturalism/physicalism is irremediably deficient as a worldview, and consequently should be rejected as false and inadequate.

Justification for premises 3 & 4:

•According to special relativity, no causal influence that is physical can propagate faster than the speed of light.

•This places a constraint on efficient material causality that is violated by nonlocal correlations in the quantum realm.

•The problem for the materialist is that such correlations need a causal explanation and no material cause, in principle, can explain them.

•In order for an entity to be a material individual, it must possess one or more well-defined and uniquely identifying properties.

•The prime example of such a property is spatio-temporal location: in order for something to exist as an individual material object, it must occupy a well-defined space-time volume. If it does not, then whatever it is – if it’s anything at all – it’s not a material object.

The problem for the materialist is that the particles of relativistic quantum mechanics are not localizable in this way:

•In order for an entity to be a material individual it must be numerically distinct from other members of its kind.

•The problem for the materialist is that quantum entities do not satisfy this criterion: both Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics violate this identity condition.

•Furthermore, in quantum field theory the field quanta can exist in numerically indefinite states (superpositions of “particle number”), a metaphysical impossibility for material individuals.

Other issues I’m learning more about:

1) Claims pointing to inconsistency of Necessitarianism and Quantum Theory.

2) Regularity Theory

3) The question of whether there is an indeterministic material explanation for non-locality.

4) How creationists point to the Cambrian Explosion as a challenge to Darwinian evolution.

5) Richard Sternberg’s writings on how “junk DNA” is not junk. I have never heard this before and want to get a better handle on his claims.

6) The use of abduction to support ID as a scientific theory.

God and Freewill

I am posting a thoughtful post from the Debunking Christianity blog (www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com): What are your thoughts? 

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If rejecting God is a grave mistake, then why would God not wish to help nonbelievers see the error of their decision? Why would he let them perish in hell for all eternity (or simply perish) without any hope of redemption? The reason, Christians tell us, is one of respect: Godrespects the decision to reject him, and therefore will not devalue this “free choice”—however irrational—by interfering. Below, I show why this answer is problematic.

First, the answer assumes that the “free” decision to reject God is worthy of respect, since without this assumption, it is impossible to explain why God would respect it. It makes no sense to say God will respect decisions unworthy of respect. So what is it about the decision to reject God that is worthy of respect? I see only two possibilities: the decision is either (1) intrinsically respectable or (2) worthy of respect because it is made by a free being who is itself worthy of respect. No will argue the first possibility. As for the second, the Christian needs to demonstrate the connection between a free agent being worthy of respect and the (irrational) choices she makes being worthy of respect. What is this connection? If I see my friend ready to jump into a volcano, should I “respect” his choice, or attempt to prevent him from making a grave error? The latter, clearly. Thus, I can respect my friend’s worth without having to respect his irrational choices. As the example illustrates, I can even respect my friend’s worth while interfering with his free will. 

Christians will undoubtedly argue that God cannot interfere with the nonbeliever’s free will, despite how she chooses to exercise it. For if God were to not accept the nonbeliever’s irrational choice, he would be devaluing her humanity or intrinsic moral worth. I’d like to see some justification for this claim, but even supposing the Christian could provide a satisfactory answer, there lies a deeper problem: why would God wish to give up on the nonbeliever? According to Christians, the decision to reject God is indicative of a deep defect in the nonbeliever’s moral and rational faculties. So it is utterly incomprehensible why God would wish to give up on trying to correct this defect. If God thinks the nonbeliever is making the biggest mistake one can possibly make, then it is far more plausible to suppose he would do everything in his power to help her realize her error—reach out to her until she ‘gets it’, no matter how long it takes. Hence, the obvious answer to the question of when God should give up is ‘never.’ It is what a fully compassionate and loving being would do, and therefore what God would do, if he exists.

Signature In The Cell

Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature In The Cell released this month. I look forward to reading it and wrestling with the arguments in support of and against the claims proposed. To see information on this book:  www.signatureinthecell.com. Below is an excerpt from his website about the book. 

 

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, by Stephen C. Meyer

 The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling. In Signature in the Cell, philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer shows how the digital code in DNA points powerfully to a designing intelligence behind the origin of life. The book will be published on June 23 by HarperOne.

Unlike previous arguments for intelligent design, Signature in the Cell presents a radical and comprehensive new case, revealing the evidence not merely of individual features of biological complexity but rather of a fundamental constituent of the universe: information. That evidence has been mounting exponentially in recent years, known to scientists in specialized fields but largely hidden from public view. A Cambridge University-trained theorist and researcher, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, Dr. Meyer is the first to bring the relevant data together into a powerful demonstration of the intelligence that stands outside nature and directs the path life has taken.

The universe is comprised of matter, energy, and the information that gives order to matter and energy, thereby bringing life into being. In the cell, information is carried by DNA, which functions like a software program. The signature in the cell is that of the master programmer of life.

In his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin never sought to unravel the mystery of where biological information comes from. For him, the origins of life remained shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. While the digital code in DNA first came to light in the 1950s, it wasn’t until later that scientists began to sense the implications behind the exquisitely complex technical system for processing and storing information in the cell. The cell does what any advanced computer operating system can do but with almost inconceivably greater suppleness and efficiency.

Drawing on data from many scientific fields, Stephen Meyer formulates a rigorous argument employing the same method of inferential reasoning that Darwin used. In a thrilling narrative with elements of a detective story as well as a personal quest for truth, Meyer illuminates the mystery that surrounds the origins of DNA. He demonstrates that previous scientific efforts to explain the origins of biological information have all failed, and argues convincingly for intelligent design as the best explanation of life’s beginning. In final chapters, he defends ID theory against a range of objections and shows how intelligent design offers fruitful approaches for future scientific research.

Appearing in this year of Darwin anniversaries—Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species—Signature in the Cell could only have been written now that the data of biology’s dawning information age has started to come in. Meyer shares with readers the excitement of the most recent discoveries, as the digital technology at work in the cell has been progressively revealed. The operating system embedded in the genome includes nested coding, digital processing, distributive retrieval and storage systems. It is very extraordinary—the terminology is all recognizable from computer science.

The appearance of Meyer’s book is timely in two other ways. First, bestselling atheist writers like biologist Richard Dawkins have insisted that because Darwin buried the traditional argument for design in nature, religious belief has been shown to be irrational in our modern scientific age. Meyer reveals that, on the contrary, it is precisely our modern scientific age that is in the process of burying materialist theories of life’s development.

Second, since a federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, ruled in 2005 that intelligent design may not rightfully claim the designation of “science,” Judge John E. Jones has become the hero of Darwinian activists and their supporters in academia and the media. The Dover decision has been hailed as the death knell of intelligent design. Hardly so! Speaking from the more relevant perspective of the philosophy of science, Meyer responds that federal judges were never given the job of defining what is scientific and what is not.

As a philosopher and a scientist himself, having worked in the field of geophysics for Atlantic Richfield, Meyer is able to step back from the fray of competing views about Darwinian theory and offer a searching, compelling investigation of life’s beginning.

Why Women Need Freedom From Religion Tract

The Freedom From Religion Foundation offers an interesting tract. While I am aware of the various views regarding women within Christianity (Note: one of many instances regarding inconsistency within Bible interpretation), I found much of what this tract says still true today. 

Why Women Need Freedom From Religion

Organized religion always has been and remains the greatest enemy of women’s rights. In the Christian-dominated Western world, two bible verses in particular sum up the position of women:

“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”–Genesis 3:16
By this third chapter of Genesis, woman lost her rights, her standing–even her identity, and motherhood became a God-inflicted curse degrading her status in the world.

In the New Testament, the bible decrees:

“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”–1 Tim. 2:11-14
One bible verse alone, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) is responsible for the death of tens of thousands, if not millions, of women. Do women and those who care about them need further evidence of the great harm of Christianity, predicated as it has been on these and similar teachings about women?

Church writer Tertullian said “each of you women is an Eve . . . You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.”

Martin Luther decreed: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it.”

Such teachings prompted 19th-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton to write: “The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman’s emancipation.”

The various Christian churches fought tooth and nail against the advancement of women, opposing everything from women’s right to speak in public, to the use of anesthesia in childbirth (since the bible says women must suffer in childbirth) and woman’s suffrage. Today the most organized and formidable opponent of women’s social, economic and sexual rights remains organized religion. Religionists defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. Religious fanatics and bullies are currently engaged in an outright war of terrorism and harassment against women who have abortions and the medical staff which serves them. Those seeking to challenge inequities and advance the status of women today are fighting a massive coalition of fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic churches and religious groups mobilized to fight women’s rights, gay rights, and secular government.

Why do women remain second-class citizens? Why is there a religion-fostered war against women’s rights? Because the bible is a handbook for the subjugation of women. The bible establishes woman’s inferior status, her “uncleanliness,” her transgressions, and God-ordained master/servant relationship to man. Biblical women are possessions: fathers own them, sell them into bondage, even sacrifice them. The bible sanctions rape during wartime and in other contexts. Wives are subject to Mosaic-law sanctioned “bedchecks” as brides, and male jealousy fits and no-notice divorce as wives. The most typical biblical labels of women are “harlot” and “whore.” They are described as having evil, even satanic powers of allurement. Contempt for women’s bodies and reproductive capacity is a bedrock of the bible. The few role models offered are stereotyped, conventional and inadequate, with bible heroines admired for obedience and battle spirit. Jesus scorns his own mother, refusing to bless her, and issues dire warnings about the fate of pregnant and nursing women.

In Defense of Skepticism

About six months ago, I wrote down some thoughts and quoted some authors on problems with the Cosmological arguments. Intellectually I think Skepticism (or maybe even Agnostic Atheism) is the “inference to the best explanation” given the nature of reality. This has been a very difficult statement to admit, but I have to stay intellectually honest and admit that I cannot defend Christianity or any religion with critical thinking. I think Atheism or Skepticism is the best approach at this time. Certainly, there’s something to be said for how the idea of God and religion has transformed many lives for the better, but we must keep in mind that God and religion has also destroyed many lives as well. Also, please note that I do not despise church, God, Christians, or religious people. It just does not make rational sense to believe in these things as absolute truth. If I end up being wrong in the end and a particular religion is the truth, perhaps God will have mercy that I used my reason to the best of my ability, but arose at the wrong conclusion. Now, onto what I wrote….

First of all, the teleological and Kalam arguments commit the fallacy of composition (to learn more about that, go here) and violates Occam’s Razor by assuming something much more complex as the “best explanation.” Furthermore, instead of saying one argues to design, they really argue from design. Using design arguments does not arrive one at any conclusion as to whether there is one god or many gods, or whether god is perfect or imperfect. Just some things to chew on while reading my comments below.

Ontological Argument:

According to Craig’s discussion on the Ontological argument, if God is conceivable, then he must actually exist. If God existed only in the mind, then something greater than him could be conceived, namely, his existing only in the mind, but in reality as well. But God is the greatest conceivable being. Hence, he must exist not merely in the mind, but in reality as well. Therefore, God exists.

The assumption of the Ontological Argument is upon the notion that an entity is greater if it exists in reality than if it exists as a mental object. “To challenge this assumption, Kant reasoned that ‘existence’ is not an attribute of an object, like ‘temperature’, ’size’ etc. Existence is not something that can be associated with the definition of an object. Therefore the existence or non-existence of God cannot have anything to do with the definition of God.”(i) For instance claiming that God is perfect or “the greatest conceivable” does not connect with existence. It is merely a concept in the mind. Craig further asserts that just because he can imagine an object, say a cat, coming into existence from nothing, that in no way proves that a horse really could come into existence that way. I believe this reasoning could be used against the existence of God. Just because we are able to think of God as a necessary being who created ex nihilo does not mean that He actually exists.

It is obvious that humanity may conceive of a perfect god. However, this being does not appear to exist in reality given the vast amount of evil and the decline in spiritualizing events. Science continues to unravel mysteries attributed to the gods and while science does not hold all the answers, the trend throughout history appears to be lessening in spiritual explanations.

Kalam Cosmological Argument:

Craig complains that Mackie did not refute the principle “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” I agree that Mackie could have at least argued for an infinite regress, which Craig claims is absurd. Either way, the Kalam argument could succeed without leading to the conclusion that God exists. There could be multiple uncaused causes–multiple gods, or the uncaused cause could be an unintelligent, impersonal force. “Finally, the argument holds that God is required to explain the existence of the universe, but offers no explanation for why God exists. If you invoke God to answer the question ‘Why is there a universe rather than nothing?,’ then another question emerges, ‘Why is there a God rather than nothing?’ The fundamental question–’Why is there something rather than nothing?’ This remains unanswered either way; so why invoke a potentially nonexistent God to explain a universe which we know exists? Since God does not begin to exist, must he have existed forever? And wouldn’t that be an actual infinite that Craig says is impossible?”(ii)

Must everything that begins to exist have a cause? Craig thinks it is unnecessary to give a lengthy defense of this claim. “Does anyone in his right mind”, he asks, “really believe that, say, a raging tiger could suddenly come into existence uncaused, out of nothing, in this room right now?” I don’t think anyone does. Wes Morriston says, “Craig then invites the reader to apply this “intuition” to the beginning of the universe, and the case for the first premise of the kalam argument is about as complete as Craig ever makes it. But surely this is much too hasty? Of course, no one thinks a tiger could just spring into existence ‘in this room right now.’ But before we jump to conclusions, we need to ask why this is so. What makes this so obvious? Is it, as Craig seems to suppose, that all normal persons believe the first premise of the Kalam argument, and then apply it to the case of the tiger? However, it is known where tigers and such come from, and that just isn’t the way it happens.”(iii)

“However, Craig thinks it is, if anything, even more obvious that the universe (and time) could not have come into existence uncaused. His reason seems to be that prior to the beginning of an uncaused universe, there would be absolutely nothing. Immediately following the tiger passage quoted above, he writes, ‘If prior to the existence of the universe, there was absolutely nothing – no God, no space, no time – how could the universe possibly come to exist? Craig thinks this is a straightforward application of the medieval principle that “nothing comes from nothing’ (ex nihilo nihil fit) – a principle he believes to be so obviously true that no one could sincerely deny it.”(iv)

J.P. Moreland on the “Meaning of Life”

Moreland states that having a preordained purpose does not diminish us because “God has given man freedom to choose what he will do with his life,” ignoring the fact that this “freedom” in a belief system that postulates a hell for the disobedient, is hollow. He closes the chapter with Pascal’s wager, arguing as if Christianity is the only possible choice and no other religions had hells of their own: “If one chooses Christian theism, he has lost very little if he is wrong.” However, maybe it is too optimistic to expect people to be good without a carrot and stick. What can atheists say to the person who says “What’s in it for me?” when admonished to be good? What can atheists offer to compare with the bribery of heaven and the terrorism of hell? Atheists can reply with reference to an authority older than the New Testament: Aristotle. Why be good? Because being good–living virtuously–is the only way to a fulfilled, self-actualized life.

By living virtuously we sustain those vital social relations-friendship, family, community–without which life is unfulfilling. Generosity, which lies in the mean between the opposite vices of stinginess and prodigality, promotes happiness. But wasn’t Aristotle wrong in this? Aren’t the evil often happier than the good? Doesn’t virtue proverbially go unrewarded? Isn’t it often perversely the case that “no good deed goes unpunished?” True, life is unfair. The good often suffer, and the evil often die old, rich, and impenitent. But it is not going too far out on a limb to assert that mean, rotten, nasty people usually have miserable lives. Prison is not a pleasant place. Even if they are clever enough to avoid prison, bad people usually have bad lives. Besides, all the efforts of fire-and-brimstone preachers have not succeeded in making hell real for most people. The fear of a miserable life in the here-and-now seems to be a better motivator.

Why should life have to be everlasting to be meaningful? Why not draw the reverse conclusion and say that, since humanity knows that life is fleeting, everyone should strive to experience all the meaning that one can within that short compass? The message deriving from the reality of humanities mortality is this: since life is limited in the number of days, hours, and minutes, all should strive to fill days, hours, and minutes with meaning. Humanity should strive to fill life with learning and gaining wisdom, – with compassion for the less fortunate, with love for friends and family, with doing a job well, and with fighting against evil. Not because God commands a list of rules or promises eternal life if we act in a certain way, but because meaning lies within what humanity makes it. I would argue for the Atheist position, which believes in objective moral values as facts of natural reality, like the laws of physics. Individuals should not need a God to tell them to love others or have meaning because ultimately everyone derives meaning from their own life. Believers subscribe these thoughts and feelings to God because it is comforting and the thought of not existing after death is too troubling. Believers also often say that God is calling them to X, Y, & Z only to validate what they ultimately desire to do. Who really knows what God is calling them to in the first place?

It is interesting that people go to church to find importance, community, and a message that warms their heart. Very few actually get messy and engage with the poor, spend time with “the lost,” or even know why they believe that Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life. For sure, a few people do live Christ-like lives, but it appears that the Christian message is not strong enough to convince most people. Why can’t the Christian message be powerful in a comfortable country? Why is it only powerful in countries that are desperate and have nothing? Why is it too difficult for God to convict comfortable, passive people of His message? To look at my own life, I think I have a comfortable life, but I am definitely not passive when it comes to seeking truth and living it out. Bottom line, I believe that Christianity lacks power except in barren lands.

However, God’s message is not as powerful as Scripture claims it is. I do not see why people need a supernatural being to give them meaning, purpose, and hope over deriving this from themselves and their community. If it is because people are “deposed royalty” as Pascal says, it could also be argued that God is deposed royalty as well. God is not consistent in benevolence or even within his commands for humanity. He began as an all loving, powerful God, but apparently made a mistake with His Creation and became deposed royalty himself. He often destroyed his Creation because of their free-will choices, which He gave to them to begin with. He favored one nation of people over all others, had to send His Son to die as an offering for humanity. What about sticking to His own message of extending unmerited grace without burnt offerings or sacrifices (deeds)? As for Jesus, the question remains whether He was really 100% human if he could not have sinned, for humanity was not set up in the garden to life out a perfect life. They were given free will, which God knew would bring about evil and destruction. Apparently, this was the best possible world to create, but I disagree.

i) http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/anselm.htm
ii) http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/ontological.html
iii) http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/kalam-not.html
iv) http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/kalam-not.html

Best Richard Carrier Quote….

I most resonate with Carrier’s quote in Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. I think this is my main problem with church, and despite this I still go sometimes….

“Every Sunday, believers go to be preached to in silence, not to actively discuss and debate the important issues of philosophy or policy. No one is being given the tools to think analytically about life and morality, or to critically examine and make an informed choice about spiritual direction, and no one is being encouraged to practice these skills.” -Richard Carrier

Is Atheism the Most Rational Worldview?

It is a well-documented fact that Jesus existed and taught much wisdom. Indeed, the historical reliability of Jesus’ resurrection may easily be doubted, however, I just cannot seem to move completely away from thinking that Christianity best explains the following: 1) the human condition, 2) makes the most sense out of meaning since all humans are deemed as valuable creations, and 3) seems to make the most sense out of objective morality. Without God as a moral lawgiver, I do not know how the meaning of life would not be reduced to a hedonistic existence embedded with subjective ethics. These are irrational world-views because they cannot backup any objective morality.  If subjective ethics are true, then what one person deems as “right” is groundless. Meaning, they have no claim to any standard that distinguishes “right” from “wrong.” So, assuming morals may be given an ontological status, how do personal realities such as morals arise from impersonal brute facts? 

So, Atheists,  I am curious what keeps you believing that you embrace the most coherent worldview? If it’s because of evil in the world, I wonder how Atheism can hold onto objective “right” or “wrong” in order to claim that something is evil in the first place. By what standard does Atheism use to determine what represents “good” or “bad?” While I do not deny that evil is a problem for an infinitely, perfect God, I don’t know how it’s not a problem for every worldview. My lingering question is, which worldview best answers the existence of evil?

While intellectually, I find philosophical skepticism most attractive, I struggle with its practical application. As you can see, I have way more questions than answers, so input is welcome! 

Fideism & My Top Issues with Christianity

I don’t think religious experience establishes anything about the existence of any particular God or gods. While I think it points to an interesting phenomena and it cannot be denied that something happens to a person during a religious experience, I think what it indicates remains debatable. Whether it’s God or not is undeterminable. I know neuroscientists debate whether religious experiences can be created or not, but the questions does still remain, why does the human brain contains these capacities in the first place? Who knows whether this originates in God or not, so religious experience remains speculative. 

One last comment on religious experience, I find it bothersome that religious experience varies tremendously around the world. You would think if the one true God wanted to reveal himself to everyone, that it would at least be consistent. If God was so infinitely perfect and benevolent, wouldn’t he try harder to reveal himself consistently around the world? I think so.

As far as religion, I agree with what John Loftus mentions in his book Why I Became an Atheist. He makes the claim that beliefs mostly depend on where one grows up and what they experience in life. If you or I were born in the Middle East, we would probably be Muslim, if we grew up in India, we would probably be Hindu, and so on. Certainly, there are some exceptions to this line of thinking, but what the majority of people believe depends upon what they are taught from the beginning. I cannot believe people growing up in the wrong religion or failing to arrive at “accepting Jesus as their savior” deserve suffering for eternity. This is mainly because I think the following: God’s existence is far from clear, the historical reliability of the NT is highly questionable, and no extra-biblical evidence exists on Jesus’ teachings. 

As many people know, Josephus mentions Jesus as the Christ and there’s one controversial mention of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This mention is contested because Josephus professed faith in Jesus within this comment, but never identifies as a Christian during his lifetime. It’s a fishy mention, but let’s keep it as an authentic reference. Since this passage is controversial, I decided to spend a significant amount of time researching for other extra-biblical references on Jesus’ teachings, death, and resurrection. So far, I have only found references to the Christians stirring up trouble and facing persecution. Nothing is noted about Jesus’ birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection outside the Bible besides the one Josephus mention. I wrote comments on Robert VanVoorst’s, Jesus Outside the New Testament, (For more detailed info: http://schoonmaker.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/jesus-outside-the-new-testament/).

 All of the Gospel accounts on Jesus’ genealogy, death, and resurrection tell very different accounts, such that, not all can be correct. These are not just three different perspectives or opinions. I find it fascinating that the earliest manuscripts of Mark do not contain a resurrection narrative. You would think representing the earliest Gospel, this would be there, but scribes inserted it later. Furthermore, As Bart Ehrman points out in Jesus Interrupted, “it is impossible that both accounts in Mark and John are historically accurate, because they contradict each other over when Jesus died. If two or more descriptions of an event (i.e. Jesus’ death) are contradictory in their details, both accounts cannot be historically correct (Ehrman, 29).” Indeed, the Gospels do agree that Jesus lived, died, and resurrected. However, it’s difficult to have confidence in the Gospels as historically accurate if they give contradictory accounts of how Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection occurred. I’m not saying this means that the Gospels are totally untrue, just that they probably do not contain inerrant truth.

Despite all of this, I still think that Christianity best explains the human condition, makes the most sense out of meaning, and objective morality. Without God and the Gospel message, the meaning of life would be reduced to a hedonistic existence surrounded with subjective ethics. So, while I struggle to accept the bible as an accurate representation of God’s character, especially given his moral monster character in the OT, which Hector Avalos wrote a convincing article about God’s ridiculous character in the OT: (http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/07/paul-copans-moral-relativism-response.html), I could take it on faith that Jesus was who He claimed to be and maybe rose from the dead. Since I do not have solid evidence of these facts, I’m more of a fideist. However, without the example of Jesus, what else are we left with? Why have any moral obligation at all? Why care for the less fortunate? 

Besides, on a more philosophical level, why would an all perfect, loving God need to create the potential for freewill at the expense of all the senseless suffering and eternal damnation of millions, if not billions of people? Certainly, God could have created freewill so that there could be “true love,” but this does not corroborate with his infinitely perfect, loving character given the amount of evil. It is quite sadistic to create this world, knowing full well that Adam and Eve would fail the test, punishing all of humanity for the rest of time. Then leaving it up to our fallen nature to reason to the correct God. If we don’t, we go to hell.

In a way, I hope that everyone is given a second chance after death when confronted by God because it’s very unclear in this life who God is and whether Jesus is the only way to salvation. I don’t think the bible represents God or even Jesus in an accurate light. I think at best, Jesus was a moral teacher and God truly does love everyone. If He truly exists, he wants them to love others, take care of their bodies, stay true to their promises, have integrity, manage their money and time well, stay true to one’s promises, and care for the less fortunate. I  do not know whether there is a heaven, hell, or even an afterlife. However, any other worldview leaves people groundless as it comes to objective ethics, moral obligation to anyone, and cannot uphold human rights without a Creator/human rights Giver. Outside of a Creator, human rights including “right” and “wrong” are arbitrary.

Ethics and Atheism

I am wondering how Atheists ground their ethical claims. Also, how can an Atheist deem anyone to have human rights since the founding fathers of America (yes, many were deist and a variety of other non-religious views) equated human rights with a “Creator?”

For the Atheist, who is the authority to determine what is “right” or “wrong” outside of mere personal opinion? How does Atheism not only afford the hedonistic lifestyle, which offers an irrational subjective ethic? Under a naturalist worldview, humans are merely animals with no higher purpose than to pursue self-preservation and pleasure. Does this really make the most sense out of human existence? 

Why have any moral obligation to not steal, lie, cheat, or be unfaithful to your spouse if one can make up their own rules as they go along in life? Since there are no eternal consequences, according to the Atheist, who cares about the finite consequences because one may get away with all kinds of injustice?

Jesus Outside the New Testament

I wrote some thoughts on Robert VanVoorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans, 2000). Download: Jesus Outside the NT

Wes Morriston’s Reply to Bill Craig on the Kalam

Here’s a reply to Bill Craig’s defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Reply2BillCraig

Hume’s Skepticism

According to Hume, no proof exists in support of cause and effect relationships within the universe. This is the case because through habitual observation, one infers a relationship between two independent events. Since one cannot experience the necessary connection between two events such as, the Law of Gravity, one cannot necessarily prove that event ‘A’ caused event ‘B.’ Therefore, even though experience and reasoning indicate that objects act in a predictable way, this fails to necessarily prove how objects will act in the future based upon previous interactions.

To establish these claims, Hume puts forth the notion that causal relationships belong to two types of knowledge: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas refer to a priori knowledge, or knowledge learned sans experience. They include anything that may be true by definition or discovered by mere thought. In order for anything to represent a relation of ideas, its contrary must be self-contradictory or inconceivable. For example, mathematical truths belong in the relations of ideas category because the opposite of 2 + 2 = 4 is inconceivable. Additionally, a square could never be circle because it is inconceivable nor could one conceive of the contrary to the statement “a triangle has three sides.” Since relations of ideas are known through reason alone, they are vacuous because they do not assert anything about the world. While causes and effects may be discoverable by experience, they may not be discoverable by reason alone. Every effect is distinct from its cause, and every cause is distinct from its effect. Therefore, an effect cannot be discovered in a causal object or event merely by a priori reasoning.

On the contrary, with matters of fact, one may contain certainty, but will not intuitively or demonstratively possess it. Matters of fact include a posteriori knowledge, or knowledge learned through experience. As such, the contrary of a matter of fact is conceivable and represent substantive statements, which are about the world. While one cannot make assertions about causal relationships through relations of ideas, matters of fact may account for causal relationships based upon experience alone. Since causal relationships are based upon one’s experience of two independent events, it cannot be known with certainty that event ‘A’ necessarily causes event ‘B.’ Hume claims that an individual observes two independent events, then infers a causal relationship through habitual observation.

The strengths of Hume’s theory rest in the fact that experience cannot grasp the causal connection, which occurs between event ‘A’ and event ‘B.’ One cannot experience the Law of Gravity and thus, may only infer that a causal relationship exists. This conclusion opens the gates for Skepticism to enter and establishes an astonishing claim that the occurrence of future events is never guaranteed. Even the statement “the sun will rise tomorrow” bears a probabilistic claim based on inferred causal events in the past. I think this points to the existence of faith within every worldview, for no one can prove with 100% certainty the following: causal events, the existence or non-existence of God, or the existence of the external world. On the same token, the notion of probability plays a crucial role in philosophy and science, so just because one cannot experience certain immaterial/material objects or states of affairs does not mean that they do not exist or will not occur. However, Hume’s causal theory is correct in that objectively proving causal relationships remains unsolvable. The answer to this dilemma brings up an important weakness of this theory. 

The weakness of Hume’s causal theory lies in the notion that one must not dwell in skepticism merely because most truth claims rest upon experience, probabilistic claims, or inductive reasoning. When a skeptic such as Hume claims that we cannot objectively prove causal relationships, and therefore we should adopt a skeptical outlook, leads Hume into a form of dogmatism with this approach. If a skeptic claims we cannot know causal relations merely because we cannot experience the connection, does not indicate that the object in question does not exist or that we cannot know of its existence. Furthermore, just because one cannot prove causal relationships does not mean skepticism reigns above probabilistic reasoning or conclusions. I think one can probabilistically know the necessary causal connection when understanding scientific evidence. Indeed, a dose of skepticism is always healthy within the pursuit of truth however, holding skepticism above probabilistic evidence short changes the fact that humanity can arrive at truth about reality without relying upon sense experience.

12 Reasons Why Christianity Is Not Truth.

I picked 12 good reasons for not believing in Christianity from the “De-conversion blog.” 

1. There are over 30,000 different “brands” of Christianity.

2. The Bible is contradictory with itself, reality, and morality.
One can defend subordination of women and equality of women using Scripture. One can use Scripture to kill infidels and find commands in support of peace. One can support slavery and non slavery at the same time.

3. God is NOT loving, merciful, good, just, etc.
He set up the world for the potential of evil. At the expense of freewill we have a false dichotomy of heaven or hell. To eternally punish those who cannot believe a certain way about God is absurd. Why bother creating such a world?

4. Everyone makes up their faith and their ideas of God as they go along. Every denomination makes up their doctrine and emphasizes the Scriptures that fit their beliefs while ignoring the other parts of Scripture.

5. The Universe is capable of functioning without divine influence. I see no evidence for supernatural support of the physical world. 


6. Pascal’s Wager is a horrific false dichotomy.


7. The idea that God would hurt someone to test their faith is completely sadistic.

8. If there is an infinite almighty all loving Creator who has one single, simple message to impart to us, why is he so spectacularly ineffective at doing so?


9. I analyzed my own religion in the same way I had others and I realized Christianity’s stories are just as ridiculous and fantastical as every other religion’s.


10. Eternal punishment for wrongs committed in a mortal lifetime, or for failing to figure out which religion to follow, is in no way just or moral.


11. I read other things besides the Bible, including a lot of science and non-Christian philosophy books, and the other books made more sense.


12. Original sin, the notion that God chose Adam to be the federal head of all humanity, knowing that he would fall, and that all of mankind would be born with a predisposition towards sin; that these creatures, would act in accordance with their fallen nature, and as a result would be tortured and tormented forever and ever, and that the church would call this just.


Christianity & Objective Morality?

Here is a response to a Christian Theist’s point on objective morality:

Christian Theist: “I do not grant that propositions truth of logic, natural laws of science, etc., exist or are knowable in any impersonal sense without God. God designed us to know these truths. As Plantinga, Lewis, and others have argued, there is no reason to trust our brains if they are undesigned. As Churchland and Rorty say (naturalists) natural selection has no reason to select for truth.”

           Evidence of brain disorders and irrational thinking indicates a natural process as the best explanation. While humanity represents a variety of cognitive abilities along with varying degrees of greatness and wretchedness, this seems to support an imperfect natural process. How does one know what ‘greatness’ (or perfection) and ‘wretchedness’ (or imperfection) are without God? One may claim that anything imperfect brings pain and hinders the sustainability of life. One does not need God to know what pain is or what threatens their natural instincts towards self-preservation. As for the term ‘perfect,’ this means to be complete and lack nothing. Hume’s claim that humanity augments its idea of the imperfect, finite world to the perfect, infinite world supports God as an idea originating in the human mind.

          Christianity points to “fallen humanity” as the culprit to all imperfection in the world. I also realize that just because many fail to reason or discover the God of the Bible as the “true God,” does not void his existence. However, “The Fall” is a highly questionable event as it can only gain support from Genesis 3. Besides, many Bible scholars interpret Genesis 1-3 as metaphorical, not literal, so assuming that you believe “The Fall” was a literal event, this is an extraordinary claim that may only gain support from the Bible itself. Therefore, I think divine inspiration of Scripture contains the weakest support. 

         As for the un-designed issue, could complex structures arise from a natural process? I think there is evidence for this according to emergence, spontaneous order, and self-organization theories. Complex life forms and reasoning ability could arise from natural processes and the motivation to “select truth,” is to maintain life. While I do not agree with Kant on everything, I think his idea of rational beings possessing equal value is a good point. I would further Kant’s “rational beings” qualification to include all human beings regardless of the degree of mental handicap. Humanity should always: continue to seek for truth, care for others because we are communal creatures, and pursue rationality. 

        My question to Christian Theists remains, does Christianity uphold objective morality? The bible could support various ethics, such as: from pro-slavery to anti-slavery, from subordination of women to equality (by the way, I think the church is a total waste of time, especially for women), not to mention various views on salvation, how one should live the Christian life is entirely subjective, and discerning “God’s will” is solely based upon emotional sentiment and individual desires. While I do not deny that a God exists, I do not think Christianity reveals who God is.

My Review of “Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity” by, John W. Loftus

John W. Loftus’s book, Why I Became an Atheist: a former preacher rejects Christianity offers a cumulative case to support the rejection of Christianity. Loftus begins with a brave revelation of some of his darkest moral moments, while discussing his journey towards Atheism.  The focus then shifts into the “outside test for faith,” which challenges all people to evaluate their own worldview utilizing the same standards they apply to all opposing views. It offers a thought experiment for individuals to step outside of their presumptions and approach various beliefs from a skeptical viewpoint. For example, Christian Theists must avoid quoting the Bible to defend the existence of God along with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. If one’s beliefs stay in tact after evaluating them from the presumed skeptical position, then one may have their religious faith.

Additionally, part one address’s issues with the historical evidence for Old Testament claims, miracles throughout the entire bible, the Holy Spirit, unanswered prayer, and the problem of evil. Part two addresses arguments beginning with the Creation account and moves through the Bible ending at Jesus’ death and resurrection with part three briefly defending the possibility of meaning without God. Overall, Loftus’s cumulative case against Christianity highlighted several issues that I agree remain as gaping holes in the faith. Some of the topics I have found satisfying answers to from the Christian perspective, while some issues I agree with him completely. For the college level, Loftus presents a solid introduction to Atheistic arguments, while offering thorough responses to popular Christian Theist claims.

The strengths of Loftus’ work includes the following topics:

1) the challenge to evaluate one’s worldview utilizing the same criteria as applied to opposing views. This includes the call for Christians to defend their beliefs sans the Bible. It is incredible how many Christians struggle to produce reasons for their belief outside of the Bible or emotive sentiments.

2) The lack of evidence supporting the archaeology surrounding the conquest of Canaan, the destruction of the Egyptian army after parting the Red Sea for the Israelites, and the complete lack of evidence in support of the exodus of millions of Israelites.

3) The subjective and speculative nature of the Holy Spirit or religious experience.

4) Science vs the Genesis accounts. While the Bible intends to claim that God exists and Created instead of offering scientific explanations, this highlights the problem that Genesis is non-literal, symbolic, and even mythical. If God is infinitely perfect, it would make the most sense for Him to divinely inspire the Biblical authors such that they corroborate with scientific evidence. Especially since God is supposedly the author of science.

5) Loftus raises a common objection to God’s character in the Old Testament and clearly explains the problem. On this issue, Hector Avalos wrote a convincing response to Paul Copan’s defense of God’s character in the Old Testament (http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-yaweh-moral-monster.html).

6) Moving forward from the Old Testament, Loftus points to several issues with God incarnate and asks a potent question, “how can one person have two minds and one will (Loftus, 337)?” Does the “divine will” override the “human will?” My question becomes, how can one person be fully God and at the same be fully a man? Something is either finite or infinite, but not both at the same time. In addition, even if one could somehow prove that something could be both infinite and finite at the same time, Jesus does not possess the same nature as humans. For humans, they possess the ability to make free decisions and make mistakes (i.e. sin). Jesus was not truly able to sin otherwise He would not be God. Therefore, Jesus is not a true sacrifice for humanity as He was not 100% human.

The following points remain solid objections to the hypostatic union: 1) God is necessarily an uncreated being. Humans are essentially created beings. Therefore Jesus is both created and uncreated. 2) God is necessarily omniscient—He knows everything. Human beings are not omniscient beings. Therefore, Jesus is both an omniscient and also not an omniscient being. 3) God is a morally perfect being, and as such could not be tempted to do wrong. Human beings, however, can be tempted to do wrong and are imperfect. Therefore, Jesus could not be tempted, nor do any wrong, yet we’re told that he was supposedly tempted to do wrong. 4) God is omnipresent, everywhere, but Jesus as a human being was not.

As a result of all these points, Loftus questions Jesus’ ability to fully act as a human being and inquires whether His will to sin always remained restrained. If the latter is correct, then how could Jesus represent a true human? In this case Jesus would have “a divine consciousness” that humans do not possess, and as such, Jesus did not possess the same choices and freedoms humans confront. Loftus concludes that “being restrained from sinning is not praiseworthy at all, because being praiseworthy demands that we acted on our own accord to choose between right and wrong” (337). If this is the case, Jesus’ atonement is meaningless, for He is not truly human. Before naming the weaknesses, it is important to note that Loftus gives a solid introduction and brief explanation of objections to the Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological arguments. For those wanting to seriously consider the soundness of these arguments, other sources are recommended such as, Plantinga’s Naturalism Defeated? And Philosophy of Religion by, Rae & Pojman. 

As for the problem of evil, I would not label this segment of the book as either a strength or weakness. I agree the problem of evil remains a major challenge to the infinitely perfect Christian God. However, the central issue with evil points to the fact that no worldview adequately answers this dilemma. Atheism contains equivalent difficulty with the problem of evil because they must ground how they know the difference between “good” and “evil.” Where does this objective standard of “good” originate? The natural process produces impersonal, material outcomes, so deriving immaterial prescriptive value claims from such a process is groundless. Even if one disagrees with this statement, the Atheist must admit that the standard for “good” originates in human beings, thus defaulting to subjective ethics, negating any right to assign a value claim to certain actions. Humanity will never know why God set up the world as it is, but just because the world is not a paradise does not automatically conclude that God does not exist. Without freewill, the world could not contain true love, the satisfaction that comes with perseverance, creativity, or the ability to be an autonomous self. In response to God’s desire for humanity to love and obey him, I claimed that God contains a lack by desiring anything in this post.

The weakness with Loftus’ book involves the following: unanswered prayer, the history of the church, explanation of morality without God, and the religious diversity thesis. Christians easily explain unanswered prayer as God responding in a different way than one expects or desires. There are circumstances when God does respond to prayer and times when He does not. It is a good thing God does not answer all prayers, for many requests would do more harm than good. Prayer cannot be measured scientifically because God does not operate according to human requests or actions. Overall, answered and unanswered prayer is very subjective. I would place the issue of prayer under the religious experience category, which does provide some evidence of spiritual occurrences, but cannot be taken seriously as it is highly subjective. 

Loftus also believes the history of the church is “strong evidence against Christianity.” I agree that the crusades, inquisition, witch-hunts, and slavery in America were dark periods for Christianity. However, Atheism balances this evil out with Pol Pot, Nazi Germany, Stalin, and Mao to name a few. Just because humanity often abuses religion and politics for selfish reasons does not mean that Christianity is false. I’m sure God, if He exists, is not pleased with how humans treat one another in His name. The question moves back to why God setup the world with freewill, knowing that so many would misuse His Word and fail to be in relationship with Him. This point highlights a related issue of the “hiddeness” of God. I think Loftus should devote more time to this topic instead of the problem of prayer, evil, and the history of the church. I think the hiddenness of God remains a main reason behind all the debates about His existence. It does not add up that an infinitely perfect God is far from obvious in our world, yet will punish people for eternity for failing to arrive at the proper belief in Jesus Christ. 

The section on life without God does not answer how objective morality could exist. If objective morals are brute facts, how do Atheists ground an objective standard? If “right” and “wrong” lie in mutual self interest, then morality is subjective, which sinks into relativism. At this point, no one can claim one’s actions are “right” or “wrong” because morals are grounded in individual preference and self-interest. Furthermore, how does personal nature of ethics arise from a merely material, natural process? An impersonal process cannot yield personal prescriptive actions. However, I also think that grounding objective morality points to the epistemological problem of how one knows “right” and “wrong” from God’s standpoint. Loftus is correct in asserting that Christians can use Scripture to backup slavery, subordination of women, murdering other nations, including support for both calvinism and arminian from Scripture. As one who believes that Atheistic Moral Realism could be true, the subject of objective morality remains difficult to ground in either God or the natural process. 

The religious diversity thesis points to the fact that religions vary between cultures and time periods. Therefore, beliefs are not a matter of rational judgment, but dependent upon cultural conditions. I agree that religions are highly dependent upon where one lives, but just because religions vary based upon location and vary to some degree throughout history, does not mean that the Christian God is a mere product of culture. In fact, the belief in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have remained consistent throughout history. While theological positions have shifted with the culture and time, the fundamental beliefs of Christianity have not. Certainly, humanity offers several absolute claims about God however, they cannot all be correct. They could even be all incorrect, but offering the argument from diversity does not establish a view as false. 

In conclusion, Why I Became An Atheist: a former preacher rejects Christianity is an important read, especially for Christians. This resource introduces Atheist objections to Christians, which many have never dealt with and sadly, avoid out of fear. For even the seasoned Christian apologist, this work still presents a solid challenge. While the comments regarding the Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological are brief and introductory, this book provides a caveat with its dense bibliography towards more in depth resources on these topics.

Secularism and Socialism In Europe

I came across an article from the blog “The Constructive Curmudgeon”promoting the ideas of Dennis Prager who wrote an article titled, “Vitality Has Been Sucked Out of European Society.”  His central claim indicates that Secularism and Socialism drains a society of creativity, intelligence, artistic fervor, philosophy, science, literature, and medical breakthroughs.

For example, Prager’s believes, “what has happened in Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe’s creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren’t many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones. The issues that preoccupy most Europeans are overwhelmingly material ones: How many hours per week will I have to work? How much annual vacation time will I have? How many social benefits can I preserve (or increase)? How can my country avoid fighting against anyone or for anyone?”

This statement brings up the following questions:  Is America any better off than Europe in philosophy, science, healthcare, art, literature? I cannot think of any living Americans “outdoing” Europeans by a wide margin in respect to philosophy, science, art, or literature. Of the vast amount of science articles I have read for philosophy of mind, many authors originate in Europe. Furthermore, philosophy of science journals, healthcare articles (see Science Daily for many scientific innovations from Europeans and Americans), and art museums in the U.S. contain a vast amount of innovators from around the world, including the U.K. and other “godless” nations. 

Furthermore, most products in America are manufactured by overseas countries. In particular, many ventilators (aka respirators) are manufactured by Germans. Siemann’s, also a German company manufactured the light rail system in Denver and remains one of the leading companies in the U.S. for power and engineering. Additionally, the first face transplant took place in France (odd, I know, but this is still science/healthcare). When at Denver’s art museum, I notice many modern day artists from Europe. Besides, why is America the leading country with depression while the Godless nations report a better quality of life?

I agree that a socialist system could condone laziness, but also consider American democracy with the plethora of handouts. As far as the issue of laziness and relying too much upon the government, I would argue that American are no less lazy than Europeans, if not substantially more lazy. The questions Prager believes Europeans are most focused on sound exactly like most Americans. If I am mistaken, please let me know how the “God-filled” nation of America is more intellectual, innovative, and creative than the “godless” nations. 

Now for the most problematic statement, ”G. K. Chesterton noted at the end of the 19th century, when people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. One not only thinks of the violent isms: Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Maoism, and Nazism, but of all the non-violent isms that have become substitute religions – e.g., feminism, environmentalism, and socialism.”

Is Chesterton asserting that people who do not believe in God believe in anything? Of all the non-Theist philosophers I have read over the years–Hume, Nietzsche, John Searle, J.L. Mackie, Rand, Ayers, Onfray, and more, they certainly do not believe in anything. Furthermore, Atheist’s I know personally do not believe in anything just because they do not believe in God.

I Wrote Some Lyrics

I needed a break from all the papers and tests, so I decided to vent and write some lyrics or perhaps one could call this just a poem….

 

Reflecting back through all these pages.

Asking questions of the authors and ages.

Trying to avoid the vacuous cages.

Running into incessant mazes.

 

Religious mystery and wonder.

Hearts pull towards its thunder.

While minds run to escape the sunder.

Disconnect from groundless claims, 

Even if it may lead to flames. Truth remains and reigns above all. 

Even if one rejects the fall. 

 

Fractured hearts, minds divide.

Where did this tide come from?

 

Doubt leads to inquisition. Does it end?

The soul is on the mend or around the bend.

Either way they say, love prevails while philosophies retail.

God claims He is the way, the truth, and the life.

Though many claim he is the mainsail driven by the world.

 

Fractured hearts, minds divide.

Where did this tide come from?

 

Supernatural claims demand the extraordinary.

Nothing but haze as in a maze.

Decide to believe anyway like at a crossway?

Yahweh? Or outside the doorway?

Belief ample even if it’s just a sample.

 

Fractured hearts, minds divide.

Where did this tide come from?

 

Now I may stand outside of grace.

Wrapped around the face of indecision.

The journey deepens, hearts unfold, and stories are not left untold.

There is hope outside the fold with no one left out in the cold.

Love delivers, religions quivers,

philosophy whispers truth.

Through the pages it inspires.

Filling the soul despite its mires.

Moral Realism or Non-Realism

I continue to think extensively over arguments in support of moral realism and non-realism. The basic question deals with whether objective morality originates in God or exist as brute facts (moral realism). Several Christian Theists argue that objective morals are personal in nature, so they must originate from a necessary (uncreated originator of the universe), personal being. Moral laws bestow moral obligation in so far as they originate in a moral law-giver. Otherwise, objective morality essentially originates in human beings if not from God as the moral Law-giver, thus promoting relativism or subjectivism. 

A challenging point brought up by non-Christian Theists involves the epistemological problem of discerning God’s will. There are very few objective morals within Christianity because Christians may interpret Scripture in various ways in order to accommodate their desired outcome. Various denominations interpret Scripture to support subordination of women, homosexual ordination, pro-life or pro-choice stances, ect…The Bible is very ambiguous when it involves objective morality. 

On the contrary, Atheists are not better off because non-Christian world views allows everyone to invent their own morality (Utilitarianism, virtue theory, nihilism, ect….), thus deeming moral standards relative. Non-Christians point to objective morality as brute facts like mathematics, which humans may discover through the use of reason. The question remains, do humans naturally possess innate morality, which they use reason to obtain or do objective morals originate in God? If they originate in God, they may manifest through Scripture and the human conscience. I think human conscience could also represent natural human instincts in order to sustain life and pursue well-being, but it could also represent the hand of a Creator who desires humanity to act according to a certain moral code.

Divine Command Theory

One might argue that God would never condone killing, raping, stealing, and torturing, for God is all-good. However, to make such a claim is to render this theory vacuous. The Divine Command Theory is a theory of the nature of morality. As such, it tells us what makes something good by offering a definition of morality. But if goodness is a defining attribute of God, then God cannot be used to define goodness, for, in that case, the definition would be circular – the concept being defined would be doing the defining – and such a definition would be uninformative. If being all-good is an essential property of God, then all the Divine Command Theory tells us is that good actions would be willed by a supremely good being. While this is certainly true, it is unenlightening. For it does not tell us what makes something good and hence does not increase understanding of the nature of morality.

A Divine Command theorist might try to avoid this circularity by denying that goodness is a defining attribute of God. But if goodness is not an essential property of God, then there is no guarantee that what he wills will be good. Even if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, it does not follow that he is all-good, for, as the story of Satan is supposed to teach us, one can be powerful and intelligent without being good. Thus the Divine Command Theory faces a dilemma: if goodness is a defining attribute of God, the theory is circular, but if it is not a defining attribute, the theory is false. In either case, the Divine Command Theory cannot be considered a viable theory of morality.

The foregoing considerations indicate that it is unreasonable to believe that an action is right because God wills it to be done. One can plausibly believe that God wills an action to be done because it is right, but to believe this is to believe that the rightness of an action is independent of God. In any event, the view that the moral law requires a divine lawgiver is untenable. 

God and Personal Experience

I recently received some helpful advise, comments on the Bible, and the importance of personal experience from Bible scholar, Brian Capper who teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University in London.  

“What we have in the New Testament are the few literary remains from a movement long ago, and I don’t doubt that e.g. a generation after the event the presentations were stylised to suit the works of which the accounts became a part, etc. The evident power of God in the original movement, though, was the confirming evidence at the time – the Spirit outpoured because Jesus was raised by God and seated at his right hand.

And again, for me personal experience is very important in this area. Even if the stories were apparently knock-down persuasive, if I had not experienced Jesus they might not merit credence. Evangelicals may not like the arguments from religious experience – they work on a personal level and cannot become a part of a great Protestant synthesis, in the way an exaggerated doctrine of Scripture/inspiration has been relied on. But if all this doesn’t work in experience, then we just have dry theological structures. I’m a great believer in fasting and praying and making space for God to speak – then what can be academically researched gets a context in life.”

I have been thinking about the role of personal experience for a long time, as I have often wondered why people either believe or don’t believe in Christ. There are many people with views of God that most Christians would reject as well. There are also many people who just cannot perceive God the way that some believers can due to a variety of reasons and circumstances. Throughout many theological discussions over the years with varying belief systems, I have noticed most (not all) individuals choose their beliefs based on personal experience far and above reason. Of course reason is used, but takes a much less priority than personal experience. This brings philosopher David Hume to mind. While I do not agree with everything he claims, I think he may be correct in asserting that there are only two types of mental contents: impressions and ideas. Impressions deal with our sensory experience, while ideas refer to our memories and imagination. Within the context of imagination, we can: compound, transpose, augment, and diminish fragments to formulate imaginations. For instance, one can think of a three winged horse because they have a concept of wings and a horse. The imagination then transposes fragments of impressions and then formulates interesting combinations such as this horse example. As a result, it is argued that the imagination can augment from the idea of the finite to the idea of infinity, so therefore, God is a figment of the human imagination. 

Here’s a disclaimer for you all: Despite my mostly negative comments about God and Christianity, I have decided to continue pursuing Christ as though He exists, but deal honestly with arguments from Atheists and Agnostics against God and the Bible. By pursuing God, I mean praying and reading the Bible. I’m not sure I can handle church these days, but I’ll do what I can to stay open to God. Currently, I am very busy with school and cannot reply often as I would like on this blog until mid-May, so bear with me.

Song about War

This is such a powerful song about the depravity of humanity, war, and poverty. I have recently came across this and found it moving. I’ve never heard of this group before, but find this song to have a lot of depth and emotional charge.

Did Jesus Commit Suicide?

I have encountered this question a few times this week. Some argue that Jesus committed suicide because He knowing and willingly went to His death.  Similarly, this would be like a solider laying on a grenade in order to save his fellow teammates. In a way this is suicide, but most would label this as martyrdom. Even if I grant that Jesus committed suicide, it would lacks genuineness because Jesus knew He would not really die, but that He would rise again. Even during his ‘death,’ he descended to the lower regions to make a proclamation to those in spiritual prison (1 Peter 3:18-20). Now, how is that fair to have people in ’spiritual prison’ before they had the chance to accept or reject Jesus? As for whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is not addressed in this post. As for suicide, I cannot call it that because His death is more equitable to the sacrificial soldier and grenade example. 

Related to this, my biggest roadblock to Christianity is the irreconcilability of an infinitely perfect God setting up the world in such a way that requires human freewill. For this scenario provided the following consequences: the potential for human evil, a heaven and hell dichotomy, and natural disasters. 

As a defender of the faith I would respond by saying that love and goodness could not exist without its opposite. If we did not know evil, we could not recognize good. Existing as robots would not be as preferable to possessing freewill. However, now I have reconsidered this and think freewill causes many problems for the supposed infinitely perfect God of the Bible. 

Another problem I have, which I write about on my blog deals with the issue of God desiring or wanting humanity to choose Him as their Savior. If God desires or wants anything, this points to a lack. Whenever anyone desires something, they do not currently have it. God cannot lack anything, but when we place anthropomorphic qualities upon God, it contradicts His infinitely perfect character. This point supports the argument that all religions are human made.