Response to conservative Christians celebrating Rittenhouse acquittal

You guys are such a great witness for the guy who told people to turn the other cheek and sacrificed his life to save others, even though he had the power to kill anyone who threatened him. No wonder so many people are leaving the church.

If only you looked at Kyle's victims and saw Jesus (Matthew 25:45), maybe you'd understand why other people don't see this as a cause for celebration.

Maybe if you saw them as human beings instead of a faceless enemy (with faults, yes, but that doesn't mean they deserved to die), you would wish for a resolution where nobody got killed instead of celebrating that the killer won't face any consequences (and inspire many more killers to come).

Maybe if you cared about human life, not just fetal life, you'd mourn the loss of these human lives.

Maybe if you interpreted these experiences thru the lens of scripture, instead of interpreting scripture thru the lens of your politics, you wouldn't be celebrating something that is DIRECTLY the opposite of what Jesus explicitly stood for.

Are conservative (or liberal) Christians "not real Christians"? Are they just reading into the Bible what fits with the worldview they already had?

Having seen both sides of it now (I grew up in a conservative Christian home thinking liberal Christians were not really Christian at all; now I'm a liberal atheist who finds a lot more common ground with liberal Christians than conservative atheists), I really feel that both conservative and liberal Christians start with a general side of the political spectrum (you can even take out the conservative/liberal political dichotomy and just call it legalism vs. empathy), and then connect with the parts of the Bible which support that basic worldview. There's too much of the Bible that isn't internally coherent, so the only way to make sense of dozens of books written over hundreds of years by a bunch of different authors is to have some basic starting points to know which parts you accept at face value and which parts you reinterpret to fit with the parts they contradict.

It's easy to say "oh, those people aren't really Christian" (whichever ones you disagree with). I think the reality is that Christians on both sides are earnestly trying to follow half of the Bible and casually tossing out the other half. That isn't something fake Christians do, it's something all Christians necessarily must do, because the Bible is a big book of multiple choice that doesn't have any single coherent worldview. I think an earnest reading of the Bible with a sincere desire to follow what it says makes conservatives more conservative and liberals more liberal. The fact that someone reads it and comes away with ideas like Westboro Baptist Church doesn't mean those people were hateful already and they just read into the Bible what they wanted to see. But the fact that a sincere and devout reading of the Bible can turn people into hateful monsters like that also doesn't mean that liberals reading the Bible and coming away with a bunch of bleeding-heart hippy-dippy love stuff are reading into it stuff that isn't there. Both sides of the ideological spectrum are truly and accurately contained within the disparate lessons taught in that diverse collection of writings.

Don't atheists have faith in science just like religious people have faith in God?

In a sense, that is correct, but only in a very simplistic sense. Religious people who make this argument would do well to heed their own counter-arguments when we atheists say that faith is not a virtue. One of the ways religious people respond to that criticism is to say that "faith" doesn't necessarily mean "blind faith;" it can also mean "justified faith" (as in, "I have faith that Steve is a loyal friend because he's proven his loyalty over and over again"). Blind faith is believing something without any meaningful evidence, whereas justified faith is being convinced of something because of evidence, but recognizing that due to the problem of induction, you can never be 100% sure that there isn't some further compelling evidence in the other direction that you just aren't aware of. I think we can have justified faith in the scientific method and the scientific community.

In my case, I did a lot of personally examining the evidence in favor of evolution; I was actually so indoctrinated by creationism that I continued to believe evolution was dumb even after I stopped being a Christian. But then eventually I decided that I should look into the evolutionist rebuttals to creationist claims, and I found the rebuttals to be far more convincing, and backed up by far more evidence. And whereas creationists claimed that evolutionists were just dishonestly propagating a science they knew was false to validate a specific worldview, the creationists were the ones who openly acknowledged that they would simply ignore or discard any evidence which goes against the conclusions they already had going in.

Bottom line, my examination of the evolution issue was pretty thorough and in-depth, and I don't really think I believe in evolution based on faith (even justified faith) in the scientific community. Yes, there are always things that we don't experience firsthand, but there has to be a limit of reasonable skepticism to what information we doubt just because we didn't experience it firsthand (analogy: somebody doubts that a certain law was passed, and you show them the text of the law straight from congress.gov, but that doesn't convince them because hackers could've just planted false information on the official government website; yes, it is technically possible, but it's outside the realm of reasonable likelihood). If a person is going to be that skeptical and that demanding of firsthand experiential information, then I would fully expect that they're only applying that extreme level of skepticism to worldviews they disagree with, because there's no way their own beliefs would hold up to the same demand (unless, perhaps, their own worldview is full-blown solipsism).

Anyway, bit of a tangent. The point is that I have investigated evolution myself quite thoroughly, and found the position of mainstream science to have far more hard evidence to support it. So then, when people attack the position of mainstream science on issues like climate change or vaccinations, I see a lot of similarities between their lines of attack on those issues and creationism. I haven't done a tenth of the research about climate change that I've done about evolution, so yes, I do have some degree of "faith" in the scientific community on that issue, but it's faith that is justified by my more in-depth examination of how science gets the job done on the issue of evolution (and some other minor issues that were quicker and easier to research).

So that's the main way that I would respond to this criticism, but there is one other small point worth mentioning. I think another way our "faith" in science is different from the religious faith that many believers have is that it's subject to change in light of new information. There are many religious people who actually take pride in the fact that their beliefs wouldn't change no matter what new information came to light (like William Lane Craig saying that the ultimate evidence which supersedes everything else is "the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit," i.e. a gut feeling). But the thing about having some degree of trust in the scientific community is that you recognize it's just humans doing the best they can, not some divine word from on high, so I think that makes it much easier to be humble and accept that we should be open to new information potentially changing our position, instead of blindly walking in lock-step with whatever mainstream scientists believe at the time. But I do think that once you've done enough research for yourself to see that mainstream science isn't just some shadowy cabal of people trying to foist a specific conclusion on the unsuspecting public to support some selfish worldview, then it does make sense to take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach to the mainstream scientific consensus on an issue. Because, as others have said, it works; it gets results.

Why do so many Evangelicals like Trump?

(This is something I wrote down as a reply to a Facebook comment in February 2017, and had it saved in a Word document. I decided to upload it now because it really hasn't stopped being relevant.)

Since the Trump administration began, and President Trump has begun to work aggressively at the goal of fulfilling all our worst fears about him, I’ve heard people express amazement that anyone can still believe anything Trump says, or support anything he does. I don’t exactly think of myself as an anti-theist, but I do think that my atheistic perspective has given me a viewpoint on this question that the average person may not have. From this viewpoint, I’ve developed a hypothesis as to why people continue to support Donald Trump despite all he’s done to prove himself utterly dishonest and unqualified.

In simplest terms, my idea is that a certain type of religious person is primed by their religious upbringing to think about things dogmatically. Before I go any further, let me say that I do fully understand that there are religious people who analyze their beliefs critically and make some effort to only believe true things (though I think many of them have a flawed starting point or epistemology, but that's a different discussion). However, there are far too many Christians who just believe because that's what they've been told all their lives. Think about it; practically any Christian home teaches their kids that God is real and the Bible is true from a young age. They don't wait till the child reaches the age of reason, and then say, “read some Aquinas on one side and some Ingersoll on the other, and then use the critical-thinking skills we taught you to decide for yourself if you agree with our beliefs.” (I tend to think that if Christianity were true, Christian parents should have no fear of doing that, but that’s also a different discussion.)

So, for those children being taught that Christianity is true from a young age (which seems to be practically all children raised in Christian homes), the first, initial reason that they believe the truth-claims of Christianity is, “I believe it’s true because my parents believe it’s true.” Later on, that might turn into, “I believe it’s true because the Bible says it’s true,” or “I believe it's true because my pastor/friends/spouse believe it’s true.” Until they actually look at the reasons behind their beliefs for themselves, then they are only believing dogmatically. My theory is that, the longer a person believes in religion dogmatically, the easier it is to believe in other things dogmatically. If you just blindly accept what your parents/pastor/spouse/etc. says about religion, then why wouldn't you also blindly accept what they say about politics, economics, current events, and so forth?

But the more you blindly accept things and believe things dogmatically, the more you build up a foundation of unwarranted presuppositions that inform your future conclusions. If you think Evangelical Christianity is the right and true flavor of Christianity (because someone said it and you accepted it dogmatically), then you’ll think conservative values are the right and true values for Christians to hold. If conservative values are the right and true values for Christians to hold, then the Republican Party is obviously more honorable and Christian than the Democratic Party. If the Republican Party is obviously more honorable and Christian than the Democratic Party, then the news sources which bolster the Republicans and bash the Democrats (such as Fox News) must be the most accurate and honest news sources. If Fox News says that Trump is actually pretty good and Hillary is completely terrible, then Trump must actually be pretty good. If Trump is actually pretty good, then when he signs an order banning immigrants, there must be a pretty good reason for doing that.

That's an over-simplification for the sake of illustration, but the point is that you can reach conclusions through sound deduction and critical thinking, but the conclusions are completely false, because the premises of those deductions were the result of believing in false claims dogmatically. A person can be completely rational in believing Trump's nonsense (but working from deeply-flawed starting points), or it could just be that they’re believing him dogmatically too. Either way, my theory is that it's the result of being conditioned by religion to accept things dogmatically and uncritically.

The late anti-theist Christopher Hitchens, in his defense of his book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” argued that even the worst inhumanities of an atheist dictator like Stalin still had religion to blame, because Stalin rode on the coattails of the religious mindset that the masses were steeped in before he took over. He used the language and symbolism of religion, tapped into the parts of their minds that had been made more credulous and uncritical by religion, and then simply replaced church with state.

Christopher Hitchens is a great icon to many atheists, but I personally thought this particular argument was a bit of a reach... until November 8^th, 2016. I think we're seeing an eerie echo of everything he described coming to pass. It's not an exact copy; Trump is using church power to get state power, instead of outright replacing church with state. But he's still using the way that a certain type of religious mind (which apparently accounts for 80% of white Evangelicals) is conditioned to accept things dogmatically, instead of analyzing them critically. Someone with such a mindset would have no reason to not continue believing in and trusting Trump, even after all the insanity and un-Christ-like behavior of his administration so far. That’s the power of dogma, and I still say that religion is the most powerful purveyor of dogma out there.

Isn’t it meaningful that all the disciples died for their beliefs?

William Lane Craig (one of the most passionate defenders of the resurrection as a historical event) and many other Christian apologists use this argument from martyrdom with stubborn regularity. It makes sense to some degree, because if it is true, it’s a very powerful argument for a transformative experience outside of themselves. But there are two problems with this argument. The first one is pretty huge; there’s no real solid evidence I could find that any of the disciples did die for their beliefs at all. And it’s not just because I was only looking at skeptical sources; even the Christian websites I found couldn’t come up with anything better than “second-century church tradition.” The lack of historicity for this claim should be made clear by the fact that Craig himself (who’s fond of using arguments from authority to bolster his claims) doesn’t even try to back this one up with a quote from a scholar or a blanket statement of scholarly consensus. Generally, the only specific evidence he cites for this claim is a passage in Josephus about James, as seen here:

According to the first century Jewish historian Josephus, James was martyred for his faith in Christ in the late AD 60s. Now most of us have brothers. What would it take to convince you that your brother is the Lord, such that you would be ready to die for that belief? Can there be any doubt that this remarkable transformation in Jesus’ younger brother took place because, in Paul’s words, “then he appeared to James”?

Even in a written piece like this (which doesn’t have the time restrictions of formal debates), Craig can only provide any actual citation for a single one of those many disciples who supposedly went to their deaths refusing to deny their belief in the risen Lord. As far as I’ve ever seen, there is no historical evidence that most of the disciples were martyred, prior to second-century church tradition. And yet, Christian apologists keep right on stating this as fact, without bothering to ever produce any sources that can validate such a high level of confidence in its historical accuracy (seemingly, because they don’t actually have any). That seems intellectually dishonest to me.

Now, I think that in itself should be enough to cast serious doubt on this point, but there is a second factor that needs to be considered. Even if some of the disciples were killed, it only has significance to the strength of their belief if they were killed after being given a chance to recant. If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “admit you were lying or I’ll kill you,” and you stick to your story, then that’s pretty strong evidence that you really believe it. But if you’re walking down the street, and someone just shoots you without making any such challenge, then it says absolutely nothing about whether you really believed whatever it was you were claiming. So, for this claim (that the disciples went to their deaths unwilling to recant) to be substantiated, there has to be historical evidence not only that they were killed, but also that it only happened after they were given a chance to recant. Now, let’s look at the passage from Josephus about James that William Lane Craig offered as such profound evidence for this argument. It fails that criterion on both levels. It does not indicate that James was given a chance to recant his belief that Jesus rose before he was executed, and it doesn’t even indicate that this belief was why he was executed in the first place. Contrary to how Craig describes it, there is no indication in Josephus that “James was martyred for his faith in Christ,” or that he specifically did “die for that belief.” It’s actually remarkably vague about the reasons for his execution, which makes it easy to read between the lines that his seditious faith in Jesus as his savior was the real reason, but only if you already believed that going in. Assumption is not evidence.

In my perception, the passage about James in Josephus is the most oft-cited evidence of martyrdom by one of the disciples who allegedly saw the risen Christ, and yet this is how thin it is. It’s like saying that someone who claimed to be an alien abductee was killed in a mugging, so that must mean he really believed he was abducted. It’s an argument that sounds very dramatic and compelling at first blush, but doesn’t hold up when you actually look closer at what evidence the proponents of this argument are citing to substantiate their claim.

Do you think religious people would change their beliefs if the existence of alien life were proven?

I couldn't disagree with that idea more strongly. You have to understand the psychology of belief, that when religion is a deeply-integrated part of a person's identity, they don't change their beliefs when provided with new information; they filter that information through the beliefs they already have and refuse to give up.

I'll give you two anecdotes which I think illustrate how some religious people would react to this (and that's not even considering the people whose religious beliefs are legitimately compatible with the existence of aliens). The first is personal, the second is a public figure. The personal one is myself; I used to be very religious. I remember one time back in those days, I started to watch the movie Paul (by that time, I was cool with R-rated movies despite being very morally conservative). There's a point in the movie where the two guys and the alien run into a fundie Christian, and the alien says his existence "disproves the notion of the Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian God." I actually turned the movie off right then and there, not because it was blasphemous, but because I disagreed so passionately with the assertion that the existence of aliens would disprove my beliefs. Mind you, I didn't have any well-thought-out theological ideas about how the existence of aliens would coexist with the truth claims of Christianity, I basically just thought, "Christianity is obviously true, whether aliens exist or not. The end."

Now, the public figure; Ken Ham. This blog post from AIG gained some mainstream attention when Huffington Post reported on it with the headline "Creationist Ken Ham Says Aliens Will Go To Hell So Let’s Stop Looking For Them." In fact, the main thrust of the post is that aliens obviously don't exist, because the Bible says that people and animals were created by God, not evolved, so there's no reason to think there would be any living organisms on any other planets. He even ludicrously claims that the whole reason scientists are trying so hard to find alien life is to disprove creation so they'll have free rein to rebel against God. That seems to go right along with your theory that if the existence of aliens was proven, religious people would abandon their beliefs, right? But look closer; there is a point in the post where Ham says, "Now the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space," and later, "this means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation." So, within this whole rant about how we should stop looking for alien life because aliens obviously don't exist from a Biblical standpoint, he's still not going so far as to claim that the existence of aliens and the truth of the Bible are utterly incompatible. He's essentially making a falsifiable claim, but with the back-door exit already wide open if that claim is ever actually falsified.

If "we" find out that aliens exist, then the first step for fundamentalist religious people will be to simply deny the truthfulness of that claim (just as they already do with evolution, because they believe it contradicts their beliefs as well). When the evidence becomes too strong to deny (like, if aliens live among us), then they'll shift to claiming that their beliefs were always consistent with the existence of aliens, and will even find verses of scripture that they can twist to claim that the Bible (or whatever other scripture they believe in) already told us that aliens exist, so it must be inspired by God because no human could've known that way back then.

Flat-earth theory is a good real-world analogue to show both stages of the process. There are people who still vehemently oppose the idea of a spherical earth, because they believe that the Bible indicates the earth is flat. Conversely, there are people who point to verses like Isaiah 40:22 as the Bible presciently acknowledging that the earth is a sphere, even though the vast majority of translations interpret the word as "circle," which is a flat, two-dimensional shape.

The most ludicrous example I've ever heard of this (a person trying to twist the words of the Bible to make it seem like it indicates foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries) was from Hugh Ross. He said that the Bible talks about the universe being constantly expanding; my ears perked up when I heard this, because I've read the Bible a few times, and certainly didn't recall seeing that. So then, he read the verse that he claimed supported that contention. It was actually the latter part of that same verse, Isaiah 40:22, which says God "stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." I'm sorry, do curtains or tents continuously and endlessly expand throughout all time? Of course not, they expand to a certain size and then stop. This verse is obviously not saying anything about the universe constantly expanding. All Ross did was take what we've learned through real scientific discovery and combine it with his dogmatic belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and then interpreted what it says through that framework. There's nothing about the proven existence of aliens that would make it impossible for people like him to continue using that approach.

Do you believe morals are objective or subjective?

I’ve recently been thinking about the distinction between values being objective or subjective, while playing Football Tactics, a video game about soccer. The way the standings work in this soccer game (I'm assuming it's based on how they work in real leagues, but I'm not familiar enough with soccer to know for sure) is a points system, where a team gets 3 points for winning a match and 1 point for a draw (there’s no overtime). If two teams have the same number of points, then their ranking is decided by “Goal Difference” (the number of goals they’ve scored, subtracted by the number of goals their opponents have scored). 

Now, is this ranking system objective or subjective? One could argue that it’s subjective because the decision to use that system was just some people’s opinion; it’s not like that’s the way it has to be. Someone else could argue that it’s objective, because deciding what rank a team should have at any given time is based on hard numbers and concrete data, not anyone’s feelings or opinion about which team is better (the way college football rankings used to work before the BCS was established). What this has made me realize is that it would probably be helpful in discussions of whether a value system is objective or subjective, if we draw a line between “origin” (how a certain value system came to be established), and “implementation” (how it is judged whether something is good or bad in a value system, after it has been established). 

Even with that distinction, the more I work through this thought process, the more confident I become that the idea of objective values simply doesn’t make sense, either in origin or implementation. I can’t think of any way that the origin of a moral system wouldn’t be subjective, since it’s always just based on somebody’s opinion (or their nature, or whatever). It is never and could never be “just the way it is.” As for implementation, I think that has to be subjective too, because there’s just no way to boil it down to hard numbers and concrete data like a soccer ranking. Even if you use as concise a moral framework as “avoid unnecessary harm,” there’s still plenty of subjectivity in judging what is harmful, what is necessary, and even what is avoidable. Everything about morality is subjective, there's no way for it not to be; I can’t see any way around that.

What do you think about C.S. Lewis' "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument?

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse."

The main issue I have with this argument is that it isn't reasonable to just assume that Jesus really did say all the statements attributed to him in the gospels. Here's an example that I think perfectly captures why it doesn't make sense to just treat all the "red letter text" with the presumption of accuracy. This example isn't about Jesus claiming equality with God, but I think it does still relate to this issue pretty well.

In John 2:18-19, skeptical Jews ask Jesus for a sign of his divine authority, and Jesus responds, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." This is presented as a prophecy of his death and resurrection. Such a prophecy coming true could certainly be interpreted as vindication of a claim to divine authority.

However, in previous gospels (Mark 14:57-58 and Matthew 26:59-61), ones that practically all Biblical historians agree were written before the gospel of John, there is a different version of this claim about destroying the temple. In those gospels, it's other people testifying in Jesus' trial that he said it, and they are explicitly referred to as false witnesses. If those verses in John were things Jesus really said, how could those witnesses be giving false testimony?

That's just one of many examples that the gospels show clear signs of developing legend, of a fish story that grows and magnifies over time. And though there are some verses in Mark that can be interpreted as indicating that Jesus is the Son of God, most of the key verses that people quote to defend his status as deity come from John (the latest gospel).

If we can't trust that a statement ascribed to Jesus in the gospels was actually said by the real historical Jesus, then we don't really have any idea whether he claimed to have divine authority or not. But even beyond that, there's one further point to consider; Jesus never explicitly claimed to be God in so many words (even if we do accept his sayings in the gospels as completely accurate). He just claimed things that Trinitarian Christians interpret as being things only God could claim. But if God really is the ultimate authority, I see no reason that he couldn't confer onto a purely-human Jesus the authority to forgive sins or things like that. If Jesus was essentially God's representative on earth for that time and culture, then I don't see any reason why he couldn't be the bearer of that authority without actually being the same being as God the Father.

So, basically, there are two key assumptions Lewis makes which undercut his argument. 1) That the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are accurate, and 2) that those things could only rightly be said by someone who is the Son of God. If either one of these assumptions are not true, then the argument falls apart (and that's without even considering the common flaw of all trilemmas, that there might be more options that we just haven't think of).

What’s your opinion on the Problem of Evil?

This is the type of thing that it might seem alternately arrogant or redundant for some random blogger like me to comment on, because it’s already been handled so much more thoroughly (on both sides) by people much more learned then me. So, I want to make it clear that by commenting on this issue, I’m not actually pretentious enough to think that I’m seriously breaking any new ground here. I expect that pretty much all of what I’ll say has probably been said before; at best I might say it in a slightly different way.

Still, I think this is the type of religious topic that is worthy of everyone expressing their own opinion about it. Like other religious or philosophical subjects where there’s a lot of room for individuals to have mild variations or subtle nuances in their opinion of it, I think it’s worth it to just kinda get it “on the books” where a person stands on this issue.

Personally, I don’t consider the Problem of Evil to be airtight, definitive proof that God does not exist, but I do consider it to be evidence which points in that direction. As I’ve said before, what I’m trying to do (in a persistent, ongoing fashion) is assess the likelihood that a god exists, and I believe that the existence of evil and suffering in the world make it less likely for that to be the case.

Now, I try to keep these posts fairly concise, so I’m not gonna bother restating the argument; I think it should be easy enough to find it elsewhere on the web. What I want to talk about instead are the apparent weaknesses of the argument; the Problem of Evil does have a couple key weak points that shouldn’t be glossed over, but I don’t think they ultimately discredit or defeat the argument.

The first weakness is that it only works against a specific category of god, that which is “omnimax” (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving or all-good). As long as an individual conception of God doesn’t have one of those three characteristics, then the Problem of Evil is not a problem for it. The reason why I don’t think this is a significant weakness is that it just so happens that the god believed in by most adherents of the three major monotheistic religions (and described in their scriptures) is omnimax, so the Problem of Evil still does apply to the most common conception of God.

The second weakness is that there appears to be some degree of presumption inherent in the argument; the person making it is kinda claiming to know (or even dictate) how God should behave. Personally, though, I don’t think it’s really as presumptuous as it might appear to be at first glance. When you look a little closer, it’s really just a matter of conclusions naturally following from definitions.

For instance, if we define “evil” as “the opposite of good,” then there’s no presumption required to say that an all-good god would be fundamentally opposed to evil. If he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t actually be all-good. Similarly, it’s not presumptuous to say that an all-powerful god should be able to prevent evil, because it wouldn’t meet the definition of “all-powerful” if he couldn’t.

Of course, in any philosophical debate, it’s always best to iron out the definitions with the individual who you’re debating, and then engage with the specific conception of God that their definitions indicate. But in general, I don’t think there is much presumption on God’s character required for the Problem of Evil to be a legitimate problem.

A third weakness might be that evil can’t really exist without objective moral values, but I’ve already responded to that objection here. In some ways, I almost think it would make more sense for the theist to argue the opposite of that (and in fact, I think that’s what they already are trying to do, but using different terms). Instead of saying that the existence of evil really proves God (which basically just boils down to equivocation), I think the theist really has to argue that there isn’t actually any evil in the world at all. Granted, when I say that, I’m excluding “necessary evil” from the definition of evil.

It seems to me, that phrase is just idiomatic anyway. If something which seems evil is truly necessary to achieve some greater good, then it isn’t really evil. If it’s “necessary” to the person who’s doing it to achieve some selfish ends, rather than some greater good, then it’s simply evil, not “necessary evil.”

So if we were to exclude “necessary evil” from the definition of “evil” (which I think is a quite reasonable exclusion), then it seems to me like the theist’s only way to defeat the Problem of Evil is to argue that evil does not actually exist in the world. After all, isn’t their usual line of criticism that the Problem of Evil doesn’t disprove God, because the evil and suffering in the world serves some higher purpose (such as allowing people to have free will)? They’re arguing that it is “necessary evil.” So if necessary evil doesn’t count as evil, then what they’re really saying when you get right down to it is that there isn’t any evil in the world at all.

But, you know, I find that really hard to believe. I won’t pretend that I can prove it definitively, or that my incredulity counts as evidence, but I would say that someone claiming that evil didn’t exist in the world at all would bear a pretty heavy burden of proof. And I contend that when theists dispute the problem of evil, that is effectively what they’re saying, whether they put it in precisely those terms or not.

If God did exist, would you want to know, and would you follow him?

If the truth be known

Do you really wanna know?

--“Truth Be Known – Everybody Gets a Shot,” Newsboys

These are really two separate questions, but I put them together because the first one has a very short answer. If God actually did exist in reality, then yes, I would want to know about it. I want my beliefs to be consistent with reality. While it’s unlikely that will ever be the case for all of my beliefs at any given time (as is true for all people, since we’re all drawing our conclusions from limited data sets), I still want it to be true as much as humanly possible. So the answer to the first question is an unequivocal, unhesitating yes.

That was the easy part. The second part of the question is harder, because it’s actually incomplete. To answer the question of whether I would follow (or submit to, obey, worship, etc.) God once I became convinced that such an entity really exists, it would be necessary to have a much better understanding of what his (or her, or its) characteristics were, before being able to make any decision whether they were worthy of my praise, respect, or submission.

Of course, if there were a theist in the room right now actually asking the question, they would probably say, “well, obviously, the God that I believe in would be the one who turns out to be real.” But then, you ask ten theists (even just among the three major monotheistic religions) to describe the characteristics of God, and you’ll get ten at least subtly-different answers.

But those subtle differences can have a significant effect on how I answer this question. If the god who is actually real loves everybody, then of course I’d worship him, why wouldn’t I? But if the god who is actually real “loves” everybody, in the narcissistic sense that they get a free ticket to paradise only if they happen to believe in him (regardless of anything else they’ve done), and everyone else gets tortured for all eternity simply because they belong to the wrong religion, then no, I don’t think I could worship such a monster.

Granted, if I was truly convinced that a god like that was real, then I might still knuckle under and submit to him out of the sheer visceral fear of unending torture for all eternity (how’s that for free will?), but I wouldn’t really love or respect him. And since God is supposed to be all-knowing, he should be able to see through that, so I doubt it would make any difference anyway (unless that God really does only want people to pay him lip service).

So ultimately, as with many theistic questions, it does very much depend on “which God?” But, since there are some readers who will probably want more of a straightforward answer, I’ll fall back on my upbringing and culture making Christianity the default setting for me. At present, I don’t feel that the god described in the Bible is one I would feel morally justified in worshipping or giving my allegiance to. A God who commits genocide (over and over again) in the Old Testament, and then condemns non-believers to infinite torture for finite crimes in the New Testament, I simply cannot see that as a just and loving god.

On the other hand, if we were talking more about a C.S. Lewis type of god, a wild and fierce, but ultimately loving and truly good Aslan-type god, who only keeps hell as a place of separation for people who don’t want to be with God in a perfect paradise for all eternity, then yeah, I could see myself being able to love and respect that type of god.

But unfortunately, I don’t see that as being what the Bible describes. 

Weren't the worst dictators in modern history atheists?

This is just a quick reply I made to a reddit post; if I were still actively updating this blog, I would try make a much more thorough reply to this common argument...

It's true that two of the dictators with the highest death counts in modern history (Stalin and Mao) were atheists, but you know what else they had in common? The biggest populations they were ruling over. If a dictator is ruling a country with only half a million people, there's really no way they can kill 20 million like Stalin did. So I'd love to see someone calculate percentages of the population that various dictators killed, instead of just raw numbers. Because, let's be serious here, ISIS (the worst theocracy in Islam) would be more than happy to kill 20 million people if they had that many people to kill and still have anyone left to rule over.

What do you consider the biggest contradiction in the Bible?

Because of just how many apparent Biblical contradictions have been documented on various websites, atheists almost face “an embarrassment of riches” when asked to name a single significant contradiction they’ve found in the Bible. We’re so used to seeing them in large groups all bundled together that it’s hard to pick out just one. So in this post, I wanted to step back from linking to various pages that have long lists of contradictions, and just kinda surgically pick a couple that I consider to be some of the most dramatic.

Don't the predictable laws of nature point to a god creating them?

From where I'm standing, I see no reason why an all-powerful deity, who created the whole universe, would need to be limited by everything working the same way every time. If a being was truly all-powerful, then "micro-managing the universe" (exerting his will directly over the movement of every single atom and particle) wouldn't be any sort of strain at all. So if such a god wanted to make a billiard ball move when it was struck one time, and not move another time, and absorb the other ball into itself a third time, that would be absolutely no problem for a god. But it would be a huge problem for naturalistic physical laws. From where I'm standing, physical laws that don't have a god behind them would have to be consistent and predictable, because there's no magical entity jumping in and changing them. Without a god, atoms are just doing what atoms do, so of course they would do the same thing every time. How could it not be regular and limited to a certain range of effects? 

Now, I'll even grant you that it wouldn't make sense for a loving god to be enacting an unpredictable universe, because it would make us be essentially living in a worldwide carnival funhouse. But if you're just talking about a generic "ordering intelligence," then I see no reason why that intelligence (if it cared more about itself than humans) wouldn't just have fun being disordering instead. In other words, I feel like the percentage of possible worlds without a god, where the laws of nature are unpredictable, would be 0. Whereas, the percentage of gods who might make the laws of nature unpredictable would be much greater than 0. Therefore, I think the existence of unpredictable laws of nature would actually make it more likely that a god exists, and the existence of predictable laws of nature do not.

Are you an anti-theist?

I wouldn’t say I’m precisely an anti-theist, but I do feel some solidarity with them on a lot of issues. I believe that most people would be better off without religion, provided they had the intelligence and intellectual commitment to see that religion really isn’t necessary for things like providing a moral foundation or giving your life meaning. But there are a lot of people who simply wouldn’t get to that point if they weren’t religious. So in some ways, I guess I feel like religion almost functions as a kind of “easy mode” for providing answers to those difficult, haunting questions of existence. And, to that extent, I can’t really begrudge people that.

But in society as a whole, it doesn’t just stop there. I recently read through the 2016 Republican Party platform, and it’s loaded with appeals to the value of faith, advocating “faith-based programs,” and pushing for policies that seem to only have religious reasoning behind them. In other parts of the world, fundamentalist Muslims are committing persistent acts of terror and mass murder, because they believe their religion gives them the right to rule the world.

What would it take to convince you that Jesus rose from the dead?

This was written for the “What Would It Take” challenge (see an explanation of what that is here). Since this challenged was posed by a Christian, my references to “you” in this post should be taken as referring to someone in that demographic.

1) The first, absolutely essential, thing required to convince me that Jesus rose from the dead, is that I would have to be convinced that it is possible for people to rise (or be risen) from the dead.

I think we can both agree that is simply impossible in naturalistic terms, so it would follow that I’d have to accept the existence of the supernatural (and probably the existence of God), for a resurrection to even be possible. I do not think that I could ever be convinced in the other direction (be convinced that God exists only because I was already convinced that Jesus rose from the dead), because even William Lane Craig has admitted that resurrection is only the most plausible theory for the “minimal facts” if you already accept that some type of God does exist. (I've delved further into the problems with using miracles as evidence that God exists here.)

Of course, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition. If I became convinced that some supernatural force existed which could raise people from the dead, it still doesn’t mean that Jesus was such a person.

2) If you have first convinced me that God or the supernatural exists, then I think the additional step required would be to convince me that a historical account which includes the claim that Jesus rose from the dead was a historically accurate document. There are a few different ways I can think of that you could achieve that result:

2a) I think probably the most effective way would be to convince me that the gospels were inspired by God.

2b) Even if I didn’t believe that the gospels were inspired, I would still have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead if I was convinced that the gospels were purely-human documents that were nonetheless accurate. There’s no reason that couldn’t be possible without inspiration; they don’t necessarily have to be God-breathed for them to be conveying true events of history. Convincing me of their inspiration just seems like the most direct approach, since the belief that they are inspired seems like the most common reason that people believe they are historically accurate. But it’s not essential, so if I could be convinced that they were accurate histories without believing that they were inspired (which wouldn’t be out of the question, if I had already come to accept that some type of supernatural does exist), then I would be convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.

But bear in mind, it’s not enough to point out some historical facts that the gospels got right, and then expect me to accept the miracle claims as well. I would have to be convinced that at least one of the gospels was thoroughly accurate for this to convince me.

2c) If there were authentic non-Christian sources which reported that Jesus rose from the dead, then I would think that would be pretty compelling evidence (if I already believed that resurrection was possible). I’m including this for the sake of completeness, even though I appreciate that it’s quite a long-shot. Naturally, it only makes sense that if  someone believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, then they probably would become Christian, so then that wouldn’t be a non-Christian source anymore. 

That may seem like setting too high a standard, but I don’t think I should be expected to accept a miracle claim just based on the testimony of that religion’s adherents. There are plenty of mutually-exclusive religions which have plenty of adherents who devoutly believe in that religion’s miracle claims. I contend the reason why that’s the case (even though they can’t all be true) is that these believers first accept belief in the religion for other reasons, and then they accept belief in the miracle claim because they already believe in the religion.

Of course, I understand that in the case of the resurrection, the claim being made is that the earliest Christians (particularly the apostles) only came to believe because they directly experienced the risen Christ. But that is just a claim. Since there have been so many other religions that have sprung up over the course of human history, I cannot accept the argument that the rise of early Christianity could not be explained without postulating that they really saw Jesus risen from the dead. So, ultimately, it’s just hearsay.

That’s why I specify non-Christian sources here. Of course, I understand this is incredibly unlikely, and I’m only including it for the sake of thoroughness, but if it happened to be the case that somebody back then wrote something like, “sure, Jesus appeared to me after I saw him crucified, but heck, Caesar rose from the dead too, so I’m just gonna keep following the Roman gods, because they’re more cool,” then that would go a long way toward convincing me. Of course, you would have to further convince me that any such document was authentic, since there is an established history of the early church screwing with secular documents.

I want to say that I understand and appreciate how this answer might be frustrating to a believer. Because it make sense that anyone who did believe the resurrection was real would become a Christian, it’s bordering on the toupee fallacy to say that I’ll only consider evidence from non-Christian sources. I want to point out, though, that I did previously state that convincing me the gospels were true would be a valid way to change my mind on this issue, so I’m not completely ruling out Christian sources. I’m just saying that some random guy who happens to be Christian writing about how the resurrection was absolutely a real historical event is not gonna sway me, because of course a Christian is gonna believe that. A Mormon will just as dependably believe that Joseph Smith received the golden plates from the angel Moroni; it doesn’t mean they have actual evidence that such an event really occurred, it’s just an article of faith for that religion.

Who are you to judge God?

This seems like the type of question that any atheist blogger should be prepared to answer, so I figured I’d just get it out of the way now. In my experience, when this question is asked, it usually arises from the mindset that the reality of God’s existence is just obvious, and so atheists are really trying to say that God is evil, not that God isn’t real.

Even thinking about it from that perspective (of God being real, and just criticizing what kind of job he’s doing), the question still doesn’t make sense to me. Imagine it’s time for a presidential election, but unlike the current 2016 race, there’s an incumbent who’s running for reelection. Imagine how nonsensical it would seem if you told someone that you were voting against the incumbent, and that person said, “who are you to judge him [or her, potentially]? He’s the president of the whole freaking United States, the leader of the free world, and you have the unmitigated gall to pass judgment on whether he’s doing his job well or not?”

How can you complain about evil if you don't believe in objective morals?

Moral evil actually proves the existence of God. For we may argue in the following way:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Evil exists.

3. Therefore, objective moral values exist. (Some things are evil!)

4. Therefore, God exists.

--William Lane Craig

I was thinking about writing down some of my thoughts on the Problem of Evil, but I figured it would make sense to head off this potential objection before it comes up. This seems like a common retort, in my perception, that Christians act like you have to believe in objective moral laws (and therefore a moral lawgiver) before you can have permission to be bothered by the existence of evil in the world.

If you don’t like how your life is going, why don’t you just ask God for help?

In my last post, I mentioned that my life really isn’t good enough to be worth trading away the hope of heaven, just so I can live by my own rules for what relatively little time I have left in this life. I anticipate the titular question is the type of thing a well-meaning Christian might ask. I’m also drawing some inspiration from my mom, who never hesitates (whenever I’m complaining about my sad state in life) to say that “following God is the only way to true happiness.” This fails to move me, though, because if that were true, I would’ve never left the church in the first place. If that were true, I should think that after two thousand years of Christianity, there wouldn’t still be all this conflict and disagreement about which religion was the right and true one, because it would slowly-but-surely be plainly evident to everyone (not just the people who already believe it) that one religion gets better “results” than the others.

But anyway, that’s a bit of a tangent. Since I’m so dissatisfied with my life, I can see how a person who believes in the power of prayer might think that asking God for help would be a good start to get myself on the right track. Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed thinking about how pitiful my miserable existence is, I might have a moment of weakness and think, “eh, maybe I should just give it a try. What could it hurt?”

Aren’t people just atheists because they don’t want to obey God?

(Click here for a longer, more detailed version of this.)

A man or woman rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the paucity of evidence. One rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit one’s need for God.

--Ravi Zacharias

(How atheists think,
according to Jack Chick)

There are three fundamental problems I see with this argument. The first is the use of generalized language. When Christians make this argument, I almost never hear them saying, “some atheists just reject God because they want an excuse to sin.” If they did say that, I don’t think I would have any major problem with this. After all, every position or stance has its share of people who believe in it for irrational reasons. I’m not familiar with any atheists who only reject God because they want to avoid moral accountability, but I don’t doubt that there are a few out there. So if the claim was just that “some atheists” do this, I wouldn’t be able to disagree.

But that’s not the claim. The accusation is universally applied, without any exceptions being offered. The way I parse the wording of that Ravi Zacharias quote, the tacit implication is that every single atheist in the entire history of the world only rejected God out of moral resistance. Rationally speaking, that’s a fairly untenable position to hold, because it would only take a single example to prove that proposition false. Personally, I know myself to be just such an example.

What would it take to convince you that God exists?

I don’t think most people intend it this way when they ask it, but this question seems to have a lot of potential to be kind of a trap question. There are basically two ways you can answer; general or specific. If you just answer in general terms, like saying “anything that meets the normal standards of evidence,” then you can be accused of not answering the question (example here; sorry for the language, I was rather salty at the time). On the other hand, if you say something specific, like, “if all the stars rearranged themselves to say “God exists!” and people got it on video, and each area saw the message in their own language,” then the person who asked the question might get on your case for making a scenario that you know is never gonna happen. (Just to be clear, I’m not saying that every religious person would act this way, but I think there is a real potential for it.)

So, answering the question can be tricky, but I don’t even think answering it should be necessary. I think the very fact that the question needs to be asked is a mild type of evidence against the existence of God. Imagine if somebody asked you, “what would it take to convince you that the sun exists?” Well, not much, really. All I have to do is look at it (but only briefly, because if I look at it for too long, I’ll go blind, and that doesn’t seem likely to happen if the sun doesn’t even exist). If God really were real, would it seriously be so hard to figure out which purely-abstract arguments or easily-reinterpreted evidence would convince us? To me, all the theories about “divine hiddenness,” and debates between continuationists and cessationists, are just attempts to rationalize the very clear fact that God’s presence just isn’t readily apparent in our world, the way it purports to be in the stories of scripture.

So I think the question shouldn’t even need to be asked, but it also shouldn’t need to be answered (and if you think that’s just me dodging the question, then you’re not listening to what I’m saying). Because, here’s the real kicker. I don’t need to know what would convince me that God exists, because if a god who really is all-knowing does exist, then he (or it) will know exactly what it would take to convince me that he exists. If he’s all-powerful, then he will be able to make it happen, and if he loves me, then he will want it to happen. In a way, then, it’s almost a parallel to the Problem of Evil. If God exists and knows everything, then he not only knows what it would take to convince me, he also knows that I want to be convinced (because I prefer to believe true things, and spending eternity in paradise wouldn’t be a bad deal either). So if he knows what it would take to convince me, he knows I want to be convinced, and he wants me to be convinced (which I grant wouldn’t be the case if the Calvinists are right, and I’m just not one of the Elect), then why haven’t I been convinced?

At present, I believe the best explanation is that such a god simply doesn’t exist.