The Blind Gift-Giver

Yesterday afternoon, I happened to be channel-surfing while driving when I came across The Michael Medved Show. His guest was atheist poster-child Dan Barker who was discussing his group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation's, campaign to erect billboards in various cities with a line derived from John Lennon's childish ode to Utopianism, "Imagine". The line used? Why, "Imagine No Religion", of course. (The phrase, "Imagine no religion" is actually not directly stated in the song, but in the second verse Lennon actually sings, "Imagine there's no country/it isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." So, the sentiment is there even if the words aren't exactly as stated on the billboard.)

Now, personally, I could care less about the sign. After all, the founders of this group seem to believe that I will sit back in my car as I drive by the sign and say, "Gee, wouldn't the world be a better place without religion?" But I know that's not my reaction. Whenever I think about the line "Imagine . . . no religion too" in Lennon's ode, I think what an impoverished place this planet would be. I think history has amply demonstrated that when atheism rules, bad things follow. Michael Medved pointed this out to Barker, but Barker simply brushed it aside believing that the examples of tyrannies arising out of officially secular regimes (North Korea, USSR and the French government following the French Revolution) were unrelated to the idea that God had been removed from the picture.

Much could be said about Barker's hour-long appearance. Obviously, I disagreed with Barker on a lot of issues. Medved said he was lying at times (such as when Barker made the obviously erroneous attempt to tie Adolph Hitler's regime to Roman Catholicism -- an implication that he denied that he was trying to make), but I don't agree that he was lying. I just thought he was misinformed, mistaken or flat out wrong on virtually everything he said. But one particular thing he said caught my attention.

During the course of the discussion, the issue came up of belief in God and foreign countries. Barker pointed out that people in poorer countries tended to have higher levels of belief in God than wealthier countries. Barker reasoned that it was because people who were poorer needed God more and so cling to an imaginary God. Actually, Barker is almost right on this one. However, it isn't that people in poorer countries need to cling to a made-up God. Rather, it's the case that people in wealthier countries tend to think more highly of themselves and tend to see less clearly the need for God. Of course, Barker's view actually supports my earlier argument that belief in God is not so much associated with IQ as level of poverty. (Thanks for the support, Dan.)

The conversation then turned to the issue of Western Europe's declining birth rates. In the course of the conversation, Medved asked Barker whether he understood that part of the reason that birth rates in poorer countries were higher than in wealthier countries was due to the fact that religious people in the poorer countries saw children as a gift. Barker responded that atheists generally (caveat: I don't recall whether he was speaking only from his point of view or for atheists generally although I believe it was the latter, hence the reference) agree that children are a gift. Medved then asked rhetorically about the idea (supported by many atheists who are largely pro-abortionists) that children were a choice. At this point, I arrived at my destination and didn't hear the next few minutes. Hence, if Barker responded, I don't know what he had to say.

But as Barker said that children were a gift, my wife, who was in the car, turned to me and asked an obvious question, "A gift from whom?" After all, a gift implies that someone is giving and someone else is receiving. Obviously, the couple having the baby are the recipients of this gift, but who is the giver? Is Barker's Gift-Giver the same as Richard Dawkin's purposeless watchmaker? How does Dawkin's vision of irrational forces fit with Barker's Gift-Giver? Let's see:

All appearances to the contrary, the only [Gift-Giver] in nature is the blind forces of physics [and biology], albeit deployed in a very special way. A true [Gift-Giver] has foresight: he [creates his gift with care], and plans [the recipients], with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of [Gift-Giver] in [child birth], it is the blind [Gift-Giver].

So, children are a gift? Not in Barker's world -- not if he is being consistent with his view. Still, it is my belief that he is using language that he actually knows to be true, i.e., that there is a gift-giver, but which he has suppressed in his desire to evangelize for atheism.

The Heart of Freedom (July 4, 2008 repost)

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th--the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain).

Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and (not-infrequently) religiously.

Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can hardly be argued that Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or witches, or atheists or agnostics for that matter, were the perceived (and even the actual) oppressors; not in this case. (Resistance by flight or arms to Muslim religious oppression is an earlier story, of the Middle Ages.)

Consequently, I fully expect that our agnostic and atheistic and otherwise sceptical colleagues have a special fondness in their hearts for Independence Day--because those particular first American Christians-and-nominal-deists made a provision of the principle that a person should be free to responsibly follow his or her conscience and best judgments concerning such issues, the most important issues of all; even if that means rejecting the religious beliefs of the founding fathers themselves--whether or not such a rejection involves substituting something better, including truer, as a set of metaphysical beliefs in their place.

Nor am I writing today’s essay in order to condemn such rejections, in principle. I have always consistently (even religiously!) insisted of ally and opponent alike, that insofar as the person is walking according to what light she can see and is looking for more light thereby, then I consider her my sister, whom I should support with my life (if it comes to that), even if she does not recognize me for her brother.

(The people I have problems with are the ones who, on any side of any aisle, would mire us in fog. That attitude is worse than an attack against me, which I care little for; that is an attack on my sister-in-heart, condemning her to hopelessness. And I am not remotely tolerant of that.)


Having said all this, however: as a metaphysician, I am aware that many people are not aware, that notions such as ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ are rawly metaphysical claims about reality. They are also claims which, in regard to our relationship to the evident system of Nature in which we live, can only be affirmations not only of supernaturalism (of one or another kind), but of supernaturalistic theism (of one or another kind).


Ontologically speaking, only a self-existent fact can truly be independent. We ourselves, however, are clearly not Independent Facts of that sort: we obviously depend upon the system of Nature for our existence and abilities, to at least some large extent. What can be coherently meant, then, by freedom and independence?

The first answer must be, that since we are not Independent Facts, we are not and can never really be ‘independent’. Whatever worldview we accept, we aren’t going to be escaping from this fact, any more than we are going to be escaping from whatever Independent Fact ultimately grounds all existence. (I am setting aside, for purposes of brevity, the notion that two or some other limited number of IFs exist, independently of each other, upon all of which Facts we are dependent. If readers want to discuss this option in the comments, I will have no complaints, although I will point out first that if the proposition is that we ourselves depend on only one of those IFs, then for all practical purposes we might as well be talking about a single IF anyway. If you wish to propose cosmological dualism, you’ll have to go the distance. I discuss this more directly myself as part of an ongoing series of metaphysical argument here.)


Very well; then what if Nature is the IF? We will recognize, realistically, that we humans will not be independent of Nature in any ontological fashion. But, is there not some kind of meaningful freedom, a derivative independence so to speak, which we can still coherently propose of ourselves in relation to Nature?

To this I answer that such a derivative freedom depends, and must depend for its possibility, on the intrinsic characteristics of the IF. We are fond of using the phrase ‘to make free’. But if by ‘make’ we think in terms of force instigating reaction, then clearly there can be no freedom at all, even derivatively, in such a reality. I somewhat doubt we could even have the illusion of freedom, for the recognition of an illusion as such depends on being able to distinguish between reality and only the appearance of a reality. Such an ability to distinguish, however, depends itself upon the very freedom to act, instead of merely to react, which is now being questioned; or else the consideration has been put back one stage for no gain.

There is a crucial tension which must be resolved in metaphysical accounts of freedom, when discussing derivative creatures such as ourselves: we, our selves, are dependent for our existence and capabilities, on something other than our selves; thus any freedom we have must itself, paradoxically, be dependent on something other than our selves. But how can this be a legitimate paradox, and not an outright contradiction to be rejected?

It should be clear in any case, that if the IF’s intrinsic existence only involves mere power-effect, then only mere power-effect is responsible for our existence and capabilities. We cannot be even derivatively free, if such a reality is true.

Moreover, it should be clear that if the IF is atheistic (aside from questions of naturalism vs. supernaturalism for the moment), then there can be no doubt as to whether the IF’s intrinsic behaviors, upon which we depend, are anything other or more than mere power-effects. By excluding, per hypothesis, the notion that the IF itself has free will, we exclude the notion that the IF may in some way choose both to grant this gift to a derivative entity and also to somehow reduce its own merely direct control over the behaviors of this entity. (The two grantings might be the same grace, looked at from different perspectives.) Nature is not going to make personal sacrifices for our sake, if Nature is not a personal entity. Nor is the problem removed by proposing an atheistic supernature with either an equally non-personal natural system derived from it (in which we live) or else a personally sentient and active natural system derived from it (for that only puts our problem back one stage for no gain.)

If I take my freedom seriously, then--and I do, especially as a necessary presumption I find I must hold in order to be engaging in any argument--then I should conclude from the presumption of my freedom, that the IF must be theistic.


But does this much mend matters? The previous deadly question can be asked just as pertinently: if God is ‘making’ me free, then is my ostensible freedom meaningful in any way? If I answer, as before, that it depends on whether I consider the intrinsic self-existence of God, the final reality, to be about mere power-effect... well, we are talking about the ‘omnipotent’, aren’t we? And if we aren’t, then we’re verging into acknowledging that while we may be talking about some conscious intentional active entity, we aren’t really talking about the IF anymore, but about some subordinate entity instead. (Shades of Mormonism here! Which, incidentally, is why I have insisted that one way or another Mormons are not talking about the final IF of reality; but the IF is what I am interested in, especially as a metaphysician.)

To sceptical criticisms such as these, I am entirely sympathetic, and even ready to agree. (I feature a whole entry agreeing with such criticisms from the particular standpoint of ethical grounding here.) If God, in His own self-existence, is only an active sentience causing power-effects in whatever creations He creates, then my apparent freedom is just as illusory as it must be under atheism. It isn’t even a real-though-derivative freedom. And I am only a puppet; at best a fictional character like the characters in one of my novels.

But then, so much for the relevance of any argument I may be making, including the ones I have been making up to this point! Such a proposal violates the Golden Presumption: that I (and you, my reader) can act--that even if derivative, we still are somehow free.


Yet, didn’t I say near the beginning that the claim of our freedom and independence--a claim we celebrate in the United States every July 4th--is itself a claim not only of supernaturalism but of supernaturalistic theism?!

If I am real and am more than just a knee-jerk automatic reaction in a system of non-rational reactions and counterreactions, then I must be supernatural in some constituent way to that system of non-rational reactions (even if I am also largely constituted by that system and its behaviors). Furthermore, if I am real and more than these things, yet am not myself an Independent Fact (which is obvious), then God must also be real and must be the IF, with Nature (where I agree this exists) being a subordinately created system, along with myself. The argument only breaks down where God’s existence is regarded as being most basically the forcing of effect.

Therefore, insofar as I recognize the presumption of true (if derivative) action ability to be required for making any argument per se (whether the argument is mine or even an opponent's), I conclude that God’s existence must not be most basically the forcing of effect. But how can this be?


Here I find I need to appeal to what I think is a dichomatic option regarding the IF’s self-existence (whether the IF is God or not-God, supernaturalistic or naturalistic, in any combination of those claim-sets.) Either the IF is dependent upon itself for its own self-existence, or else the IF is not even dependent upon itself for its own self-existence. Each of these options, in its own way, resolves the problem of mere force-effect being intrinsic to God’s self-existence; but each option does so in very different fashions.

The latter position, which goes by the technical name ‘privative aseity’, essentially denies that even God’s own action is intrinsic to God’s own self-existence. If this sounds rather more like a static atheism than theism--I agree! Nevertheless, it is also, ironically, the position that has been usually taken by theistic philosophers, since the days of Aristotle. (Whether they were misunderstanding what he meant is beside the point; though the debate over whether Aristotle was a theist after all might not be entirely beside the point! But neither is it a debate I intend to engage in here.)

If the IF does not act at all for His (or its) own self-existence, then of course the IF’s existence must not be most basically the forcing of effect. But then again, a host of other problems begins to emerge which, while not immediately inescapable, will eventually resolve into effectively proposing atheism, I believe. Since I already conclude on other grounds (ones logically more prior--and ones that involve positively respecting the existence of even my opponents as responsible persons), that I should believe not-atheism to be true instead, then I am inclined to reject privative aseity and consider the other option of self-existence.

The other option, is that God’s own action is intrinsic to God’s own self-existence. (That the IF is going to be paradoxically self-existent in any case, is something we will be required to logically accept whatever else we believe to be true, once the logical math has been done; so I am passing over this potential difficulty, not without some sympathy, but for sake of relative brevity.)

On the face of it, this proposal should look more immediately theistic: even if I decided (which I would, for a technical reason I will not go into here) that I should accept positive aseity to be true, and yet still tended (which I don't) to believe atheism, I think I would find it more and more difficult to maintain that belief, the longer I consistently held to positive aseity.

But what positive aseity entails, is nothing other than that God is (borrowing biological language for a semi-anology) both self-begetting and self-begotten. We are talking at least, then, about God the Father, and God the Son, as nevertheless being the singular Independent Fact.

Normally I would discuss the option of modalism here. Instead, I will abbreviate to the result I already know (from experience) I will reach if I do: the Persons must be distinctively real as persons, even though they constitute one substance. They cannot be like two of the three or five ‘aspects of the Goddess’ in some popular mythologies; or rather, the Persons are aspects of the singular God but also more than only aspects. The persons are to be regarded as distinctively real as Persons.

What we arrive at, then, is a discovery: even though the Independent Fact does act (and so in that regard exercises power) in order to be eternally self-existent, this intrinsic action of the IF is itself an interpersonal relationship. The Father actively begets the Son, the Son actively concedes to the Father, so that the circuit of self-existence will be complete and completely active in one substantial unity.

If power-effectment then (to coin a term), is an interpersonal relationship at the most foundational level of reality, restricted only in the sense that self-existence chooses to not cease existing and cannot choose to simply exist and also not exist simultaneously (on pain of contradiction of ultimate reality, which is itself), then the first hurdle has been exceeded: my existence as a person does not depend on mere reaction to stimuli, whether atheistically or under mere monotheism. Consequently, neither would any derivative freedom I am given by God: to exist as a real boy, not as only a puppet. (Which is the hidden point to the fable of Pinnochio.)


I do not say that this is the end of the difficulties. I would (and do) need to work out other implications and corollaries from this, as a beginning of understanding the process of creation distinct from self-existence--a creation which I find includes myself (as a not-God entity).

But I can say from here, that insofar as I presuppose my freedom in some meaningful fashion--the same freedom any atheist, agnostic or other sceptic presupposes and indeed insists upon, in standing for what they believe to be correct--then I find I am robustly asserting a reality’s truth that is not only supernaturalistic, and not only theistic, but at least bi-nitarian. (I haven’t discussed a Third Person yet, because as far as the argument has gone here I do not discover such a person. This does not mean I would never reach such a conclusion from inference, however; refer to my section of chapters on "Ethics and the Third Person", especially from this entry onward.)

It is, in fact, only in orthodox Christianity that I find these precise claims also being made by people who, in turn, are drawing inferences from data ostensibly revealed in a historical story: which in fairness should dramatically increase my respect and regard for that general claim of special inspiration!

On the other hand, if (as some Christians prefer to do, though this is not my own preference) I began with the orthodox Christian metaphysical system as a presumption, then personal derivative freedom of the only sort that can be coherently available, even to a proponent of atheism, is provided for as a logical corollary of the worldview. (Actually, such freedom is necessarily presupposed even to presuppose the worldview, which leads to what I regard as major problems of circularity; so I personally do not recommend proceeding by this route. But to the extent that some Christian philosophers insist on doing so, I affirm, somewhat tautologically, that such freedom is in fact specially included in the package!)


Which leads back to the grief of my initial remarks: that Christians, who of all people ought to have known (and know) better, have still insisted on religious oppression throughout our history. Such oppression is not only immoral, it directly contravenes the very doctrines we profess to hold and cherish as truths. Sceptics are entirely correct to account us as hypocrites when we advocate, and have advocated, such things; and I cannot personally find it in my heart to blame them if they turn with loathing from the fruit we have spoiled (a fruit spoiled, I would say, by the persistent technical heresy of gnosticism, insisted upon by us as a safeguard we ourselves ought to have rejected), and reject our attempts at linking freedom--including the freedom cherished and died for by our ancestors, in order to secure the blessings of liberty today in these United States and other nations--with a system they find through simple (if occasionally oversimple) historical polling to have been, with some regularity and in some ways, an enemy and oppressor of freedom.

It is in honor of such sceptics that I am writing today’s entry. Yet it is also precisely in honor of such sceptics that I am, in fact, an orthodox Christian apologist. Against the abuses of our history, I urge now and always: please, do not give up hope.

'Christianity' is not the heart of freedom, whatever some uncautious apologists may have said to you. And you are correct to complain when Christians try to promote it as such (for this is the heresy of gnosticism, among other things.)

But God, the Father and the Son (and the Holy Spirit, too) is Himself the very heart of freedom. And He gives His very life for your freedom, too: cherishing you, yourself, whoever you are--forever.


God’s hope, then, to all our readers, around the world, on this day, and every day.

Jason Pratt

Chiming in on the "Atheists Have Higher IQs" Canard

Atheists want to think that they are smarter than people who hold religious convictions. This belief is reflected in the decision of some of their numbers to refer to themselves as "brights." Recently, another atheist has drummed up the old canard that atheists have a higher IQ than most people. According to an article published at Telegraph.co.uk entitled 'God is not just for the stupid' say Christianity's clever people, "Professor Richard Lynn, Ulster University's emeritus professor of psychology, said that more members of the 'intellectual elite' considered themselves to be atheists than the national average."

A related article entitled Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God' ,expands on Professor Lynn's comments.

A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.

* * *

Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.

He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."

He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.

Paul Woolley, director of the think-tank Theos, responded to this statement by noting that "Religion is a complex phenomenon and Professor Lynn's explanation is simplistic. He has recycled the long-disproven thesis of inevitable secularisation."

"Academia had a religious origin - the first universities were originally established by the Church, and some of the finest academics in the world today, not to mention some of the greatest minds in history, are deeply religious.

"The research fails to take account of a variety of cultural factors that would affect the outcome of opinion polls and surveys, and makes a series of unproven assumptions, not least that a high level of education is synonymous to a high IQ."

Others joined Paul Wooley in responding critically to Professor Lynn.

Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said it failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors.

"Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response," he said.

Dr Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at Leeds University, said the conclusion had "a slight tinge of Western cultural imperialism as well as an anti-religious sentiment".

Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt institutions."

While I appreciate the civility of these responses, I think that they are entirely too mild. The idea that religion and IQ are related has been analyzed and rejected at least twice on this blog. My fellow blogger, J.L. Hinman, did a very nice job of evaluating the claims in his post entitled Bogus Atheist Social Sciences: The Myth That Atheists Score Higher on IQ Tests. There, after a lengthy analysis, he makes the point that the studies that are better in terms of sample size, age and number, all point to their being no such correlation. I have made my own evaluation of one of these studies (the most recent one which was then being touted) in a post entitled Lower IQs Lead to Faith in God? where, in part, I believe I do a fair job of demonstrating that a better correlation is between IQ and poverty than IQ and religion.

But what about Professor Lynn's claim that the sharp contrast between the number of people who are believers among the "Royal Society fellows" and the general public? Can it simply be attributed to IQ? The effort to draw that connection based on such meaningless evidence demonstrates how easily someone can accept anecdotal evidence as proof of their position on the most tenuous of grounds.

Consider this: Let's suppose for a moment that the people in the "Royal Society fellows" all have higher IQs (a claim that may not be as obviously true as Professor Lynn would like us to believe). Isn't it just possible that the reason that these oh-so-smart fellows hold a similar view is not so much because they have thought it through but rather because they are indoctrinated that way? Perhaps if they were asked, a full ninety percent of them may say, "I personally have never examined the evidence for God, but . . ." and it doesn't matter what follows the "but" in that sentence because whatever follows would be a mere unexamined adoption of the views they have heard in their inner-circle of fellows.

Besides, as I pointed out in my earlier post on this subject:

Having said all of the foregoing, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that some very smart people not only don't find religion important, they are devout atheists. Does that somehow mean that the people with the lower IQs are wrong? Certainly not. In fact, the poor and the less gifted people are going to be attracted to religion more than the gifted and intelligent but not because they aren't smart enough to know better. Instead, people who are gifted and intelligent tend to have a higher view of themselves and their own importance and abilities. In all sincerity, it isn't necessarily a "I'm smarter"-thing, but rather a "I don't need God"-thing. People who already recognize that they aren't as smart or as gifted as other people are more ready to recognize that they need help -- that they cannot make it on their own.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Those who are proud of their own intellect and their gifts are not seeking God, and what they aren't seeking they will never find.

Comments like Professor Lynn's are pure intellectual snobbery, nothing more. He wants to take anecdotal evidence that his fellow elites (who are supposedly smarter -- but that itself is questionable) are often more atheistic as proof that atheists are simply smarter guys. There are so many possible reasons that the higher education community breeds atheists that it is difficult to enumerate them. I have only given a couple of examples, but several more come to mind.

While I respect the views of atheists, they are not smarter than Christians. But then, it doesn't surprise me that many atheists believe this silly claim. After all, since many of their arguments boil down to "I don't believe that . . .", it is important for them to be able to claim that they are smarter and that their beliefs are thus better reasoned. But this claim is unsupported and really all boils down to pride -- and the Bible has a lot to say about pride. (See, e.g., Proverbs 8:13, 11:2, 16:18 and Mark 7:20-22.)

Atheism and the Meaning and Taking of Life

Atheists often demonstrate more zeal for their lack of faith than many Christians do for their faith. Why is that? When I was balancing belief and non-belief, it seemed to me that the choice was between something that offered meaning and Nihilism. It never occurred to me to believe so there would be meaning or to disbelief to escape the burdens of belief. That was simply the choice.

The human yearning for meaning, however, appears to transcend the logical extension of disbelief. This explains why atheist regimes have much more blood on their hands in the last few hundred years than Christians have compiled in its lengthier track record. (For a breakdown of the numbers, check out Richard Deem's article on the topic). It is hard to imagine an atheist believing in something so strongly that they would be willing to die for it, much less kill for it. But millions of victims of atheist states of the 20th Century bear witness to the contrary. Despite arguing that there is no transcendent being or meaning, atheists have again and again found sufficient meaning to kill and oppress. And too often, as with Christians who have done the same, the killing and oppressing was done in the name of what is otherwise a worthy cause. For atheist communists, meaning was attached to the State above all else. For the secularists of the French Revolution, reason and liberty were the values that lead to slaughter on a grand scale. As one victim of the Reign of Terror remarked on her way to be beheaded, "Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name."



New Atheist arguments seeking to pin atrocities on Christianity have force because atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ. The atrocities stand out all the more, however, because they can be criticized on the purported basis upon which they were committed. The same cannot be said for the crimes of atheism. Moreover, great good has been done because of the values of Christianity (such as the abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, stigmatizing and criminalizing infanticide, and promoting charity). Atheism lacks a comparable track record of benevolence, nor is there any reason to suppose it would produce one. Nor are there any countervailing beliefs within atheism to mitigate against descents into extremism.

Twenty Percent Growth . . . Or Not

In March 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey which contained a number of new, up-to-date details of American Life. Initial reaction to the study could be found in a press release issued by the Center for Inquiry on March 3, 2008. Of course, the pontification about the meaning of the data found in the press release is unbelievably slanted. However, the Center for Inquiry Press Release trumpeted a rather interesting fact.

According to the Center for Inquiry Press Release, atheism is on the rise and now includes a whopping four percent of the American Population. This is up from 3.2 percent which was the number reached by the last survey apparently completed in 2004. That's an increase of 0.8 percent or roughly a twenty percent increase in the total number of atheists!

Obviously, atheism is taking off, right?

Well, maybe not.

An article in the New York Times entitled Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance by Neela Banerjee gives more details about the initial survey, including a link to the actual survey (unlike the Center for Inquiry press release). The New York Times Article includes following interesting tidbit:

The new report sheds light on the beliefs of the unaffiliated. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, 70 percent of the unaffiliated said they believed in God, including one of every five people who identified themselves as atheist and more than half of those who identified as agnostic.

Okay, so if one in every five people who identify themselves as atheist hold a belief in God, then that means that twenty percent of self-identifying atheists aren't really atheists (unless we are going to start changing definitions). So, if the percentage of the population that self-identifies as atheist is up to four percent of the total U.S. population ,but twenty percent of those aren't really atheists then (let's see, 4.0 divided by 5 is .8, so 4.0 less 0.8 is . . . .) the atheist population is really 3.2 percent!

Isn't that where we started?

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- theism or atheism

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

In my previous entry, I introduced two different examples of attempts to propose that the ultimate reality is both atheistic and theistic. (Not to be confused with ontological dualisms which would propose two ultimate realities with one being sentient and the other non-sentient. This concept was covered in previous entries, though it'll be discussed again in later entries where applicable.)]


On one side we have this concept: the IF is a Mind, but it has no plans and does not initiate events.

On the other side, we have this: the IF is not a Mind, but it has plans (or 'purposes') and initiates events (or 'strives').

What do these propositions offer?

The first one may seem to offer an explanation for the apparent intelligibility of the universe: the universe is not completely arbitrary, and there are notions we can discover about it which we can trust to a very large degree (maybe absolutely) to be true statements of the way reality really is.

These notions could be called static, or even objective, truths, although (like a mountain that isn't going anywhere) these truths would reflect different aspects under different conditions. Two oranges and two tomatoes will always take up four spaces in your box--unless you cut the oranges into sections, after which they are arguably no longer 'two oranges'. And the observations we make about things like this, give us data from which to infer reliable truths.

It would be easy to slur 'intelligible' into 'intelligent'; it would, in fact, be one variation of the famous (or infamous) Argument from Design. [Footnote: it would also, I think, be another variation of the externalistic fallacy: just because an entity behaves intelligibly, does not mean the entity is itself intelligent.] But I don't think the Stoics did this, necessarily. I think they looked around at their lives and their world, and concluded that the entities capable of the best efficiency were capable of reasoning. Greek thinkers were very concerned with 'efficient causes', and the Stoics were no exception; thus the final (and most 'effective') efficient cause must (they decided) be capable of Reason. The 'highest' thing they (and we) meet in our world is reasoning ability; thus Reason must in some way be a function of the highest thing. [Footnote: this would be one variant of the Argument from Reason, though not one of the variants I myself employ.]

Yet the Stoics do not seem to have been proposing an entity that could give commands or introduce effects into the natural order in any fashion; they had already had quite enough of that, thank you very much, from Greek polytheism.

At any rate, I can see that if I accepted the first variation of 'sentient and non-sentient', I might have some reassurance that reality was, at bottom, at least somewhat similar to myself--and a Stoic was very properly concerned with reaching his or her full potential, which involved interfacing most efficiently with reality (which naturally would be feasible if ultimate reality shares some key characteristics with us). At the same time, I wouldn't need to worry about this Mind personally bothering me--it has no purposes, no plans, no personality. It doesn't initiate action. It isn't going to send a priest to my door asking for contributions to the temple, or for my sons in a war--or for my soul's allegiance. I can pay attention to it as a Mind when I want to, and when I feel like it; it is convenient to me. (Time to suggest new laws at the public forum? Well, let's think about how this divine Mind would try to order things if it was faced with our particular situation, and if it had intentions.)

The second proposition offers me a very similar package, despite the switch in characteristics. Instead of the cold, unfeeling mechanism of Darwin and his ilk, Nature must be alive--like me! [Footnote: remember that insofar as natural mechanism goes, the supernatural theists would also usually be included with the "ilk" of Darwin...] Nature is 'up to something', and for all I know it could be something good--if not for me, well, then for my descendants, because self-ordering is in Nature's character, so to speak. (Or, well, somewhere in Nature's character anyway, mumble mumble entropy mumble...) I am alive; it is alive. It and I are not so different. I can look back in all sorts of history, and see Nature providing just the right events at just the right times to bring about--me! At the same time, I needn't worry about Nature bothering me--it has purposes and initiates action, but it has no personality. The kind of actions it initiates are, well, really beneath my notice; too simple and basic to bother me. It isn't going to send a priest to my door asking for contributions to the local parish, or for my sons in a crusade--or for my soul's allegiance. I can pay attention to it as a Life when I want to, and when I feel like it; it is convenient to me. (Look at the past, this is the way history is going; and that means this is the way Life itself, the irreducible Fact of the universe, is striving to go. It is mankind's destiny to be part of the plan I am advocating.)

Obviously, these two ideas throw a sop to my own pride; it is (only) up to me to figure out what the Divine Nature is up to. The Divine either isn't smart enough to understand its own plans, or despite being 'rational' it doesn't have plans. It either isn't smart enough to have opinions of its own, or despite being 'rational' it cannot initiate judgments to form 'opinions' per se. The world is on automatic pilot; and the pilot is an autistic savant who happens to be pretty good at piloting! He's going to do his job, which is only worth my time noticing on the macrohistorical scale, and I'm going to do mine (vitalism). Or, he's going to do his job (except, y'know, without intentions of doing so), and I'm just along for the ride; although it makes a difference to my happiness whether I buckle-up in a first-class seat and take the ride as it comes, or pop open the hatch to crawl out on the wing (early Stoicism). Either way, the pilot isn't going to come out of the cabin and annoy me. I may have to put up with some unruly passengers, of course; but that is to be expected.

On the one hand, we have a denial of initiation ability for the IF; but it still somehow represents the necessary order of interactions between cause/effect, ground/consequent. It is unconscious, but can still produce efficient mental effects--as I can reactively answer questions under anesthesia, although I didn't choose to.

On the other hand, we have an affirmation of initiation ability, although this doesn't include the processing of efficient mental effects. Yet despite its initiation ability, it is still considered to be (quite overtly so) 'unconscious'. Thus it doesn't consciously judge--especially it doesn't judge me! The particular actions it initiates are essentially beneath my notice. For all practical purposes, it is not initiating actions at all.

An atheist, in distinctive opposition, would say: the IF does not initiate actions. It does not think. It is blind, unconscious, automatic. There is no point in saying that It has Reason if those other claims are true about It; that is just playing with words.

A theist (including, I think, some polytheists and pantheists), in distinctive opposition, would say: the IF does initiate actions. It has purposes, and plans, which It is striving to bring to fruition. It knows where it wants to go; and It knows where It wants Nature to go. And that means It knows where It wants me (and you) to go, because one way or another we are part of It. And if It has plans and purposes, then by default--by definition of what a 'plan' and a 'purpose' is--It is intentionally, actively excluding one set of potential behaviors for another set. There is no point in saying It does not have Reason if those other notions are true about It; that is just playing with words.

The n-SIF advocate (for example the naturalistic atheist) and the SIF advocate (for example a Jewish theist) both cut pretty cleanly, I think, through the contradictions of the attempt at a middle-ground. For this reason (and for some reasons involving contradictions in general, which I have already covered in previous chapters), I will eventually be required to decide, if I can, whether the IF is sentient (as an action initiator that can, among other things, actively judge the coherency of linked propositions), or non-sentient (a blind, automatic, non-purposive mechanism that initiates no actions but very effectively reacts and counterreacts).

The middle-ground pantheist (this type of middle-grounder is typically a pantheist, although not all pantheists accept this both/and proposition about the IF) may reply that she didn't literally mean the IF has Reason, or that it has 'purposes'. She was 'only' speaking metaphorically.

I note that in the way she would use this term, she means something reductive--she means the reality is less, not more, than her description implied. I also note this can only lead to a n-SIF proposition if it is followed through consistently! No one ever bothers to say they were 'only' speaking metaphorically when they denied something had active purposes or when they denied something could accurately judge abstract links of reality in what we would consider a 'cogent' manner. No one bothers to say they were 'only' speaking metaphorically when they described reality as 'blind, automatic and non-purposive'. The middle-ground proponents could turn out to be atheists (of some sort) after all; it is, at least, another example of how the attempted position collapses into one or another distinctive position when any kind of practical application is made.

On the other hand, I don't think reductionism is a very good example of what it means to speak 'metaphorically'. Although I think such reductionistic use of metaphor can represent a definite notion that its adherent is trying to get across, such a tactic can be abused to imply that whenever anyone speaks metaphorically they really mean less than they appear to be saying.

I strongly disagree with such a use, and the removal of this misconception will help some people deal with claims about 'religion'. So to the topic of metaphor I now turn.


[Next time: 'on' metaphors]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- theism and atheism?

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.]


I have been arguing throughout this book that philosophical positions can be most cogently divided into two mutually exclusive categories: non-Sentient Independent Fact, or Sentient Independent Fact. I have reached this position mainly by tracing the implications of apparently competitive belief-systems (it turns out they were advocating one of these at bottom all the time), or by discovering that competitive theories end in self-contradictions.

But some people throughout human history would agree there is such a thing as the IF (or at least we must presume there is, in order to build philosophies and subsequent sciences) and that we can discover particular things about it (at least in principle); yet they would also propose that this IF is, in essence or in effect, sentient and non-sentient.

For instance, the early Stoics (dating back before the Christian--or, if you prefer, 'Common'--era) believed the rock-bottom irreducible Fact of reality possessed Reason. Because of this, they insisted that human laws should be drafted and polished to mimic as closely as possible what we could discover about this divine Reason. At the same time, these Stoics insisted that this Reason had no purposes. It was, after all, the physical element of Fire (which they thought was the basic building block of all reality--today we would think of it as ‘energy’); and Fire, while it clearly ‘behaves’ very effectively, has no purposes. They thus rejected the concept that the Ultimate would initiate its own agendas or plans within 'our' world or in our societies. In a way, this philosophy was a rejection of Greek polytheism, perhaps (curiously) by combining the characteristics of two of its ultimate aspects: Chaos and the Fates. Exactly how people got to this belief is not what I am concerned with, however. Some early Stoics proposed (in effect) that what I am calling the IF was really sentient, and really non-sentient.

This type of idea can be found in many cultures, across many eras. In the late 18th through early 20th centuries, as scientists and philosophers were hammering out the implications of biological evolutionary theory, some thinkers proposed vitalism to be true. The rudimentary non-reducible Fact of reality is (according to this proposition) the space-time system we call Nature (taken as a whole); but the basic irreducibly fundamental units of Nature are alive. Yet they are too simple to have a mind: it seemed evident at the time that minds (per se) could only be exhibited in the nervous clusters we call brains. The totality of Nature, considered as a whole (since it is not a 'brain'), must therefore also be considered mindless. Yet (said the vitalists) evolution could be explained as the striving of this mass of ultimately living matter to the intrinsic purpose of self-organization. Entropy might win out in the end, but the natural cohesion of matter (despite entropy in the meanwhile) illustrated this purposeful organization.

Against the vitalists were the mechanists who proposed that Nature as a whole was not and could not be alive, and certainly its most basic units were not alive; and without life (or even with rudimentary life), purposes did not exist at that level. Obviously the mechanists included atheistic naturalists; but (for what it is worth) they also included supernaturalistic theists of various stripes, trying to make sense of the new data.

Again, the scientific/philosophical combinations involved at this juncture are too numerous for me to try to trace (and frankly I haven't the pertinent information to do so). My point is merely that vitalism was another (yet distinct) example of a belief that what I call the IF is both sentient and non-sentient. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

'It really can think, but it really has no purposes and does not initiate action.' 'It really cannot think, but it really has purposes and does initiate action.' I think either version of this concept is necessarily self-contradictory at the primary level; and anything built on this concept will either carry that self-contradiction at its core, or else emphasize (perhaps accidentally) one side at the expense of the other--thus ceasing for all practical purposes to be that sort of belief.

Where self-contradictions are maintained throughout more complicated expressions of the concept, I can literally have no good reason to accept the proposition and so no good reason to accept anything developed afterwards on those grounds: the self-contradiction itself ensures (as I illustrated earlier) that there are no grounds. Advocates of this type of notion might be saying true things about reality when they get to their more complicated proposals; but they would be saying those true things despite their initial position, and this would tell me that if they do happen to be matching reality, then there should be another way to get there.

Furthermore, an attempt to begin in flagrant contradiction must (as a practical matter) collapse into either one proposition or another, in order to maintain some kind of cogency (so far as I have examined SIF and n-SIF propositions). The Middle and Late Stoics, for instance, focused increasingly on the practical application, at both the individual and state level, of the ethics derived from the ultimate Reason. Eventually, some Late Stoics began to express their views in language that hinted an approach to--or maybe even an acceptance of--the notion that the divine Reason was a purposeful, fully sentient deity; the IF was a SIF. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

This would be only another working-out of issues I have raised before (primarily why I should avoid truly contradictory claims about the IF, if I am going to bother searching for true ideas about it); except that it also has more than a passing acquaintance with some issues I will be raising later in my second section. So I will focus a little longer on these two propositions, and see what comparing and contrasting these claims can tell me about how we, as humans, perceive 'sentience'.


[Next time: trying to have and not have sentience]

What Motivates the Skeptic’s “Study” of the Bible?

Many skeptical critics of Christianity fancy themselves as devotees of reason and dispassionate inquiry. From this perspective, it is those Christians and their apologists whose analysis should be distrusted because of their bias. The myth of the unbiased skeptic was challenged in an excellent book by Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism. His theory is that atheism as a philosophical movement was at least in part a reaction to perceived oppression. A state church linked to oppressive regimes was part of the problem and the denial of God’s existence struck at the heart of its authority. This would explain why atheism enjoyed more popularity in Europe, with its established churches, than in America, with its separation of church and state.

I had not thought about McGrath’s theory for a while. Then I started reading Jesus, In History and Myth, ed. by R. Joseph Hoffman and Gerald A. Larue. This book is published by Prometheus Books, the “go to” publisher for anti-Christian and atheist literary efforts. It was commissioned by the “Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.” Its goal is not original research but to “disseminate the results of scholarly investigation of the Bible.”

This talk of simply disseminating the results of modern scholarship into religion calls to mind “The Soviet League of the Militant Godless,” whose mission was to stamp out religious belief in the Soviet Union. In their hands, so-called scholarship and science was used as a propaganda weapon against Christianity. The League even changed its name after World War II to the more benign sounding, “All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge.” Apparently, as demonstrated by the latest “brights” self-branding, militant atheists have not yet mastered the fine art of public relations.

In any event, back in the 80’s, the Committee for Scientific Examination of Religion decided to publish a book on the historical Jesus. What caught my eye and reminded me of McGrath’s book was the frank explanation as to the Committee’s motivation. What prompts free-thinking individuals to spend so much time studying religion? No doubt there are a range of motivations and I have no knowledge about how many members of the Committee might be atheists, but as the Chairman of the Committee admits in the Preface, “it was, in part, in response to these threats to free and open inquiry from the fundamentalist right wing that the Bible project had its beginnings.” Id. at 8. The threat posed by “the fundamentalist right wing” includes insisting on the acceptance of Bible ethics, threatening the free choice of reading materials at public libraries and the teaching of evolution, and the freedom to enjoy a variety of sexual behaviors. Id. It was these perceived political threats -- threats of oppression -- that motivated the Committee to critically examine early Christianity. While members of the Committee would no doubt claim that their efforts are genuine and scholarly, the bias inherent in their motivation is undeniable.

This is not to say that all of the contributors to the book are consumed with the same bias. There are some decent articles from a variety of viewpoints (to the Committee’s credit), by – among others -- Morton Smith, David Freeman, and Robert M. Grant. But the more “skeptical” contributors often reveal the same pervasive bias as the Committee.

We learn from one contributor that an improperly scientific examination of the Bible is apparently responsible for “frontal attacks on the secular state” that threaten our “democratic republic.” Id. at 55. Also, naïve faith in the Bible is responsible for Ronald Reagan’s defense build up and Harry Truman’s foreign policy. Id. at 56. The same author’s scientific inquiry also reveals that the Protestant Reformation was at its core nothing more than “a gloss supplied by intolerant practitioners of religious exclusivism.” Id. at 61.

Another contributor writes about “the all-male theological establishment” proclaiming “an inherent sexism.” Id. at 73. Next, John M. Allegro – whose claim to fame (I am not kidding) is his work “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” – warns of “the strangely compulsive nature of a faith that can turn sinners into saints, and charming old men into ‘born-again’ politicians not entirely averse to blasting the rest of the world into philosophical conformity in the name of the Lord.” Id. at 90.

The Committee was nice enough to give the last word to a Christian contributor. Of course, the purpose of his article is to voice common purpose with atheists against “retarded adult” evangelicals. Id. at 211. The author has “grown out of” fundamentalist Christianity and is now interested in joining forces with atheists to oppose the “extreme conservative” evangelical attempts to teach creationism and impose “worship” in schools. Id. at 211-12. He expresses contempt for those who actually believe in the virgin birth and endorses an attack on Margaret Thatcher as “un-Christian.” Id. at 216.

The sheer volume devoted to the perceived threat posed by right-wing fundamentalists to liberal political goals compared to more straightforward notions of intellectual inquiry is revealing. The criticism is often not that the right-wing fundamentalists must be opposed because they get the Bible wrong, but because they take it so seriously that they might let it inform their vote on political issues. But if you destroy the Bible as a source of authority, you eliminate the threat to your own philosophical or political perspective.

Some of the same authors of the above-mentioned book remain active today. Other contemporary skeptics and Jesus Mythers share many of the political fears of their predecessors. For example, the political discussion board at Internet Infidels is a hotbed of far left political perspectives. One Jesus Myth crusader, Early Doherty, took a hiatus from his historical writings to focus on politics. His website still refers to the re-election of George W. Bush as the greatest catastrophe in American political history that will deal severe setbacks to “rationality and the struggle against the ignorance and superstition.” He expresses fear that conservatives will oppose attempts to promote gay marriage, stem cell research, and other "liberal progressive ideas."

How does this fit into McGrath's theory about atheism as in part being a reaction to perceived oppression? It seems that Jesus, In History and Myth and the examples of more contemporary skeptics (who may not necessarily be atheists) provide more specific examples of McGrath's general point. By their own admission, they possess a deep fear of the effect they think orthodox Christian beliefs will have on their philosophical or political agendas. Whether well-grounded or not, the effect is that orthodox Christianity is styled as an oppressive regime that must be resisted. How best to fight against such oppression than challenging its source of authority? If arguments can be crafted that the Bible is untrustworthy historically and, better yet, if Jesus may not even have existed, then these skeptics will have an effective way of combating the threat of oppressive, orthodox Christianity.

So the next time a skeptic complains about the bias of Christian scholars or apologists, recognize that they likely have their own deep and heartfelt biases with which they are contending. The perceived resistance to oppression discussed above may be one of them, but there are others.

We're All Atheists? -- Flight 236 From Xenia

A few days ago, I wrote a brief post about the use of the phrase "we're all atheists" by atheists who want to try to say that the belief in less than the full pantheon of gods that have ever been invented by the fertile minds of man is simply one step short of the belief in no gods or God. As I lay in bed last night, my own fevered imagination thought of the following analogy to further illustrate the problem with this mindset.

Imagine two air traffic controllers alone in a tower of a little used airfield late at night somewhere in the Rocky Mountain states. No flights are expected for the evening, and the two air traffic controllers are there mainly to communicate with flights heading towards busier destinations and to handle any potential emergency situations. Bored, the two like to pass the time by playing cards. This particular evening, something unusual happens: the radar picks up an object in range. Imagine the following conversation.

"Hmmm," the first air traffic controller murmurs as he looks at the radar screen. "Looks like the radar is picking up a plane in the area."

"Don't be ridiculous," the other says shuffling the deck for another hand of Rummy. "There aren't any planes out there."

"But there's something out there; the radar's showing it."

"Probably just a bird, or perhaps a weather balloon. After all, people are always mistaking those for UFOs -- so why can't our radar pick it up as a plane."

"What are you talking about?" the first air traffic controller said with more than a hint of agitation. "There's something showing up. Why are you so convinced it isn't a plane?"

"Because," the second responded dealing the cards, "there aren't any planes out there at this time of night. There aren't any scheduled until morning and none of the other airports are close enough that we would be picking up one of their planes."

"But the signal on the radar . . . ."

The second air traffic controller picked up his cards and began organizing them in his hand. "Okay, let's see if I can't make this clearer for you. Do you think that's flight 236 from Xenia?"

"Flight 236 from where?"

"Xenia."

"Xenia, Ohio?"

"Yeah, Xenia, Ohio."

"Of course not."

"Well, why not?"

"Uh . . . to start with, we don't have any flights travel to this airport from Ohio. Second, unless they've built one recently, Xenia doesn't even have an airport."

"Exactly. So, if you can understand why I don't think that's flight 236 from Xenia, you can understand why I don't believe that's there's any airplane out there at all. Hence, you don't believe there's any airplane out there either."

The logic is the same. There is no logical justification to say that because I don't believe that a particular doesn't exist, it means that I am close to believing that none of the set of things of which the particular was a member doesn't exist. In fact, there is a huge difference between the belief that a particular thing doesn't exist and the belief that none of a thing exist. I can believe that Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist, but still believe that detectives exist, can't I?

No, this line of reasoning is simply silly. I would like to say that I'm surprised that so many atheists seem to adopt this saying as if it is somehow profound, but I'm not.

We're All Atheists?

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ~ Stephen Roberts

For reasons that aren't quite clear to me, some people actually believe that this is some type of profound statement. Whenever I read or hear this statement, I wonder why someone would be foolish enough to think that believing less than all of a thing is somehow equivalent to believing none of the thing.

Oh, sure, I understand that it is simply a statement designed to show that if I can fail to believe in certain gods, than I should be able to understand why an atheist rejects all gods. I get that. But that isn't what the statement says -- it says we are both atheists.

Well, our friend William F. Vallicella, Ph.D., over at the Maverick Philosopher has taken on this issue in a post entitled Christopher Hitchens and the "We're All Atheists" Canard. Using the same basic claim about how we're all atheists as made by atheist Christopher Hitchens, Dr. Vallicella notes:

The idea is that since we are all atheists about some god or goddess, we should be atheists about all gods. A howling non sequitur, of course. Consider this parallel 'argument':

We are all anti-scientific about some scientific claim or other in the sense that all of us deny some scientific claim or other and with justification. Thus I deny, and I hope you do as well, Dalton's assertion that water is HO and the pre-Michaelson and Morley contention that light requires for its propagation a medium, the so-called luminiferous ether. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely. But presumably no one will think that one ought to be anti-scientific about every scientific claim.

No one thinks that because many once well-established scientific assertions have been abandoned as false that all scientific assertions ought to be abandoned as false or will be. No one takes the Hitchens-Dawkins 'further step' when it comes to scientific claims. Why should it be any different in matters of religion?

Yup, that's it.

But I personally welcome atheists to continue to make this same claim over and over. It will just remind me, when I read this same claim repeated on website after website, exactly the extent of the free thinking that is actually occuring by those who don't believe in God.

Answering the Twelve Irreligious Questions

On February 3, 2008, atheist mathematician John Allen Paulos wrote an article for ABC News in which he raises a series of questions that he thinks ought to be asked of the Presidential candidates (primarily on the Republican side) about faith and the Presidency. To my knowledge, the article entitled Putting Candidates' Religion to the Test: Twelve Irreligious Questions for the Candidates Before "Tiw's Day's" Elections was not answered by any of the candidates.

While some of the questions are directed specifically towards Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, I thought that the questions alone were so loaded that it would be worthwhile to evaluate the questions. I thought that the best way to do so would be to answer the questions that he posted as if I were the candidate running. Hence, just for giggles, here is how I would have answered his questions if I were running for President (substituting my pseudonym for that of the Presidential candidate to whom a particular question was directed when appropriate):

1. Do you really believe, Mr. [BK], that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that humans and dinosaurs cavorted together?

Personally, no. I am part of a group who would be called Old Earth Creationists. I believe that the universe is somewhere around 14 billion years old and that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. However, I don’t believe that people who hold that the Earth is only a few thousand years old are irrational. They simply accept a more literal version of the Biblical testimony than I do. You see, if one accepts the claim that God inspired the writing of the Bible (and there is good reason to believe that – contrary to your arguments in your books), then it is not unreasonable to value the testimony of the one who created it more than the attempts by fallible humans to piece together the evidence long after the fact.

2. Religious people often accuse atheists and agnostics of arrogance. Do you agree? And is it arrogant to say, as [Governor Huckabee has], that [his] sudden rise in the polls was an act of God and that [he] wish[es] to amend the Constitution to better reflect "the word of the living God"?

Some atheists are arrogant, but I don’t think atheists as a whole are arrogant – just wrong. As far as Governor Huckabee’s statements, I don’t believe that his rise was an act of God. However, I do believe that his rise in the polls and his failure to win the nomination were part of the overall sovereign will of God. Finally, the claim that he wanted to amend the Constitution to better reflect the Word of the living God was limited (as I heard the speech) to a couple of social issues that remain subject to dispute in this country – homosexual marriage and abortion. Now, personally, I think he has the right to want to amend the Constitution to conform to his notions of morality in the same way that you have the right to try to amend the Constitution to your notions of morality. Your ideas of morality are not entitled to more weight merely because you come at them from an atheistic standpoint.

3. Article 19 of the Arkansas state constitution states, "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court." Although it and similar laws in other states are not enforced, do you support their formal repeal?

Yes. Although I think that people who have a fuller understanding of the greatness of God are more humble because they see how limited they are in both goodness and wisdom which makes them better servants, I don’t think that it is right to require that belief to hold office.

4. Why, Mr. Romney, in your speech ostensibly devoted to religious tolerance, did you not extend this tolerance to the millions of atheists and agnostics in this country, people who, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, are still held in very low regard by many religious people?

Obviously, only Mr. Romney can answer this question, but I certainly agree that Americans should be tolerant of all religions: even agnosticism and atheism.

5. Do you not see an implicit religious test in your statement that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom"? Furthermore, are not, respectively, most of Europe and some Islamic countries obvious counterexamples to your statements?

No, there is not an implicit religious test in that statement, but there is a simple factual claim with which I agree: freedom does require religion. I don’t think that Europe is a counter-example because freedom in Europe arose out of a Christian worldview (even though many in Europe have now abandoned that belief). As far as Muslim countries go, I think it is clear that most Muslim countries are not nearly as free as countries that arose from a Christian culture.

6. Is it right to suggest, as many have, that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral when the numbers on crime, divorce, alcoholism and other measures of social dysfunction show that non-believers in the United States are extremely under-represented in each category?

I don’t agree that any studies really show that, and the reports that I have seen on studies lead to a contrary conclusion. Since I have not delved into the numbers myself, I will simply say that I don’t believe the assumptions in the question are correct.

7. Do any of you think God speaks to you, only to Gov. Huckabee, or to none of you? And, if I may, does God have a tax policy, a health care policy, a policy on Iraq, Iran, gay marriage, Guantanamo or the Riemann Hypothesis?

I believe God speaks to all of us, but I don’t believe that every time someone says that God has spoken to him or her that God has, in fact, spoken what the speaker asserts. The one place that I feel assured that God has spoken is in the Bible. Does God have a tax policy, etc? I am sure He does, but He may not have communicated the details to any of us. Rather, we are left to use the principles that He has spelled out in the Bible coupled with our own reasoning and prayers for wisdom to seek to arrive at the answer closest to the one that is closest to God’ position.

8. How would you suggest that we reason with someone who claims that his or her decisions are informed, shaped, even dictated by fundamental religious principles, which nevertheless can't be probed or questioned by those who don't share them?

That’s a darn good question. I have been trying to figure out a good way to break through fundamentalist views whenever I speak to the devoted followers of Darwinian evolution. But, of course, no one running for President on the Republican side holds the types of views that are of concern in your question.

9. I think we can all agree that a candidate who thought that we ought to outlaw interest on loans or revert to a barter system would not be a good steward for our troubled economy. Would you also agree that someone who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and that Noah's Ark is an event in zoological history would not be an effective leader on issues such as stem cells, climate change, and renewable resources?

No more than I think that a person who believes that somehow life sprung into existence from non-life solely by natural causes would not be an effective leader on those issues.

10. Do you see any danger of a kind of theocracy developing in the United States? And, if I may sneak in an extra question, do you think that American religiosity has (or could) threaten American dominance in science and technology?

No, I think that people who are concerned about the imminent development of a theocracy in the United States are the same type of people who think that the World Trade Center was bombed by President Bush. As far as sneaking in an extra question – you’ve only been doing that throughout these proceedings, and given that I haven't objected to this point, I think it's clear that I don’t mind at all. To answer the second question, I think that in no way does American religiosity threaten American dominance in science and technology since I firmly believe that our tremendous growth in science and technology is the result of the firm beliefs – founded in a Christian worldview – that the universe is knowable and that science can lead to actual knowledge about the world.

11. How literally do you take the Bible or other holy book? Do you subscribe to any argument(s) for God's existence other than the one that God exists simply because He says He does in a much extolled tome that He allegedly inspired?

If you are asking if I read the Bible literally, the answer is that I read it literally where I think it is meant to be taken literally and I read it figuratively where I think it is intended to be read figuratively. As far as subscribing to arguments for God’s existence, the answer is that I find several arguments for the existence of God compelling. I do, however, look forward of reading your book to see if you actually have anything new to say about these arguments or if you are simply rehashing in new language the same tired arguments against God’s existence that have been answered innumerable times.

12. For many, religion has been a source of ideas and narratives that are enlightening, of ideals and values that are inspiring, of rituals and traditions that are satisfying. It has also led to hatred, cruelty, superstition, divisiveness, credulity and fanaticism. What can you do to further the former and minimize the latter effects?

I thought I was running for President – not Theologian in Chief. But to answer the question, I would simply say that the Bible teaches two commandments that it calls the greatest of the commandments: (1) Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and (2) Love your neighbor as yourself. If we truly follow these commandments, there would be no hatred, cruelty, superstition of divisiveness. (I’m not sure what you mean by "credulity" in this context, and "fanaticism" is somewhat of a subjective term – I strongly suspect you think that I’m a fanatic because I believe that God exists and the Bible is true.) Hence, I would ask those that are in charge of the churches to stress these two commandments and their relationship to the other parts of the Bible. By the way, I note that I could ask the same question of you because atheism has also led to hatred, cruelty, superstition, divisiveness, credulity and fanaticism. Since atheism has no charge to love one’s neighbor as himself, what exactly do you propose to do to minimize these ill effects of atheism?

The questioners would then breathe a sigh of relief, thank the university and the candidates for making the discussion possible, and wish them all Godspeed in their continuing campaigns.

And I, in turn, would ask that the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you, and the Lord grant you peace.

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- religious belief and reasoning

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here.

This entry concludes a fourth chapter, begun here. I highly recommend reading at least as far back as this, first.]


But some people (believer and sceptic alike) will still have problems with the concept that anything definite may be discovered about the Ultimate Reality. To the sceptics, especially the atheists who are philosophical naturalists, I reply that we discover apparent truths about Nature and its operations and character all the time, and use (sometimes incorrectly, but sometimes correctly, too) such information all the time. This is despite the fact that if non-sentient Nature is the foundation of all reality, then it must be as impossible for derivative human reasoning to fully understand it, as for us to fully understand a sentient ultimate Fact.

For that matter, it seems clear from the science of quantum mechanics that whatever Nature is--whether it is the Final Fact or a derivative entity itself--humans are not capable of completely comprehending it. Quantum indeterminacy assures us of this. But we did discover quantum indeterminacy; and it hasn't stopped us from learning plenty of useful and (as far as we can tell) true positive characteristics of Nature.

For instance, Newton's physical laws may have been transcended by quantum physics, but they have not been abrogated; we can still calculate with virtual certainty what will happen when physical bodies with characteristic set 'A' interact in fashion 'B'. So atheistic naturalists, at least, should (in principle) already understand and accept that we are not barred from discovering particular characteristics of the Final Fact merely by it being the Final Fact.

Religious believers, meanwhile, may or may not have a slightly different position on the matter. Pantheists technically advocate only one level of reality, which they believe to be sentient. Their practical position on this topic (aside from the question of sentience) is the same as the atheistic naturalists: they do have particular beliefs about the system of reality (even saying "God is not thus" declares implicitly that God has one characteristic and not another), and the status of ultimate reality hasn't stopped them from believing they have learned these things. [See first comment below for a footnote here.]

Supernaturalists, however, have an extra potential problem: the specifically 'supernatural' characteristics of 'Supernature' would seem to be inexpressible in terms of 'Nature'. Similarly, a 2-Dimensional man would have no capability of really discovering true 3-D properties via reasoning, much less perception. [See second comment below for a footnote here.]

Now we are touching on an issue that has great relevance to the start of my second section; because this illustration works by presuming the 2-D man has in fact no 3-D properties. But, if he has even one 3-D property (and if it is the correct type of property), then the door is open for him to deduce as much as he can about the properties of 3-D reality. Perhaps he cannot deduce very much, or very much that is useful; but that must wait until the attempt is made. No immediate bar is placed in his path meanwhile--except the question of whether or not he has some (discoverable) 3-D property. Thus, at worst my attempt at an accurate and useful deductive argument is put into a reserved limbo until (or unless) I can establish we have some type of supernatural characteristic.

On the other hand, we also now touch the topic of God's intentions (if any) in the matter. An atheist could easily be willing to agree, in principle, that if I could discover a thread leading out of the 'black-box' of Nature, I would not necessarily be prevented from deducing something useful and true about the Supernature the thread is attached to. This would be a fair acquiescence on her part to me, whether or not I could convince her I have found a thread--for the principle would work just as well for either of us! If she discovered (or exclusively deduced) that what the 'thread' leads to is also non -sentient, then she would remain an atheist--though she would now be a supernaturalistic atheist. She would have discovered that this newly detected or inferred ultimate level is no more sentient than the evident Nature. In any event, a non-sentient Supernature would not be capable of acting to bar our inquiry about its existence and characteristics.

But, a supernaturalistic God, being sentient and ultimately superordinate to me, could be capable of acting to prevent me (or anyone) from discovering something, or even perhaps anything, about Him.

This is certainly a possibility; but, then again, God might also decide to make it possible for me to find my way there. Almost all supernaturalistic theists claim God has in fact done this, through various means. Most of the 'faith-only' theists would claim God has done so through a Scripture (I agree); most of the 'faith-only' theists would claim God has done so through certain scriptures, and absolutely not others (I partially agree for reasons I hope to make clear very much later); many of the 'faith-only' theists would claim God has done so only through Scripture.

But even if God has done so 'only through Scripture', any knowledge we have about this still would be an instance of rational perception and judgment on our part.

In the case of the Hebrew Bible and Christian 'New' Testament, however, I want to point out once more that those scriptures themselves tell us God has used (and does use) other ways than 'pure reliance on Scripture' to get knowledge of His existence and character to us. Here are some examples:

a.) God speaks to prophets who tell other people what He said [see third comment below for a footnote here]; but the audiences for whom the message is also intended (not just the prophet) are expected to judge the prophets by using their reasoning. Does the message fit with other messages previously judged to have come from God? Does the messenger exhibit supernatural power to 'attest' (as the Greek puts it) that at least at face value the purported 'prophet' might be expected to be speaking for God? Does the prophet, in hindsight, have a 100% success rate for anything he or she predicts?

This means someone could legitimately decide an ostensible prophet was not a prophet, in which case the legitimate thing to do was reject (or even kill) the false prophet. That judgment comes from, and through, the responsible reasoning of other people, though. Which in turn, as annoying as this may be to contemplate, means a sceptic might be responsibly reasoning, too, to reject an ostensible prophet. For example, I'm not really sure I could blame a sceptic for noticing that Micah predicts that the Messiah will throw back an Assyrian invasion with the help of a special group of judge-heroes. Clearly, when the Assyrians eventually invaded, this didn't happen! (In the larger story context, a defense could be made that God provisionally retracted that expectation to be fulfilled later somehow; but if this is put forward as a reason to believe Micah to be a legitimate prophet anyway, then it becomes a fallacy of special pleading, I think.)

b.) God allows 'pagans' (non-Jews, non-Christians, non-Muslims, if you prefer) to perceive His existence and character through their own cultures and devices. The total picture these other people have may not be right, but parts of it are right. Certain rulers in the Hebrew Bible fit this category, stretching back at least as far as the priest-king Melchizedek (who evidently was superior to Abraham, as Abraham could accept his blessing in the name of God). The most famous example may be the astrologers of Matthew's Gospel who, in the story, learned of the forthcoming birth of the Messiah from their 'normal' 'pagan' activities.

c.) The Apostle Paul tells the Christian congregation in Rome that God has given to all people the knowledge of His moral character, so that all people may have at least some level of personal (not just causal) relationship to God--which they deny at their own peril. This ability is also given so that all people may realize, that whatever their creed, they know they do not follow their creed perfectly, and thus stand condemned not by the lack of a foreign knowledge but by the knowledge vouchsafed to them. [See fourth comment below for a footnote here.] This, by the way, does not mean better knowledge is not possible for them to learn, and certainly does not mean the better knowledge is not better for them: it is not a creed that all ideas of religion are equally true or even equally useful. Paul means that people cannot avoid an important knowledge of God by being ignorant of Christianity, and are thus still accountable for their actions; but this necessarily must mean that God makes provisions for at least some real truths about Him to be reached in ways which are not the 'best' ways. [See fifth comment below for a footnote here.]

My Christian, Jewish and Muslim brothers may perhaps have an advantage at understanding this point (if they will take that advantage), because despite some very serious differences between us, which we cannot all be correct about, we do share some equally serious metaphysical and even historical beliefs. If I believe metaphysical or historical proposition 'A', and two of my competitors affirm it as well, then I must either admit that God has provided the other two people with that true knowledge (whatever my opinion may be about other particulars of their beliefs) or I must pretend this agreement does not exist. We all three agree that all mankind are brothers by God's design, grace and intention; so willful blindness to recognize shared points of reality which we agree to be true, especially when it involves the fracturing of relationships between brothers, looks to me very much like a sin! I, at least, do not intend to answer to God for a willful fostering of discord.

At any rate, the Scriptures I am familiar with tell me that scriptures are important, but God is not limited to them. And if someone presents me with another proposed scripture, then how am I supposed to perceive its superiority and/or authority without comparing and contrasting in some fashion--even if, at the very least, this means comparing and contrasting its message with what my feelings (or 'inner attenuations to God' or whatever) are telling me? This comparing and contrasting, even with what might be called the internal witness of the Spirit, is still reasoning!

At the most fundamental (and fundamentalistic!) level, then, of Christian witness (and other theistic witnesses, too), I still cannot jump off that shadow. Reasoning is there; to deny it, is to cut myself off from any potential of God's witness, even to myself as a person.

If a rock cannot think, then God cannot have a personal relationship with a rock; it would be a contradiction in terms. (He would still have many different kinds of causal relationships with the rock, of course; and He could still have those relationships as a Person Himself. This is why I emphasized the word 'with'.) Throwing away or ignoring my reason, when it comes to God, leaves me in no better shape than the rock! God might as well not have raised us from the dust! Indeed, my own tradition relates, from the very beginning, how a flat-out refusal to think cogently can dramatically ruin an established relationship with God.

Satan tempted Eve, in the story of Genesis 3, not with the lure of 'knowledge' per se (the fruit gave