A Response/Challenge to a Christian on Facebook.

I haven't had a good idea for a blog in a while. I think I have one now. Recently, I've engaged in several conversations on Facebook, but the format, I'm afraid, has not been conducive to productive conversation. So, what I would like to do is to offer a friendly challenge to any theist who would like to have a conversation about anything related to religion. By moving the conversation to a blog, we will able to engage in more structured, coherent debates--preferably debates where we choose one topic and stick to it (the historicity of Jesus, the reliability of personal experience, etc.), paying close attention to our opponent's posts and responding respectfully. Trying to discuss five big topics at once results in a big mess, and it allows posters to ignore a lot of the claims and arguments being made.

My first challenge goes to a poster on a friend's page. He posted on a thread that began with a Richard Dawkins quote: "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."

The post addresses several topics, so taking them all on in one post goes against the blueprint I have laid out. However, I'm not sure if the poster will accept the challenge, and I really want to get the ball rolling. If the poster accepts the challenge, we can break the conversation up into sections--or focus on one particular topic of his choosing.

The original Facebook post has been copied and pasted here (spelling and grammatical errors are his), but I have broken it up into sections. I did not rearrange anything. The order is the same. If you take out my responses (bold), you can read his thoughts in the order in which he presented them.

With that said, let's begin:

“I'm a good God fearing christian that's dabbled with philosophical issues lik this but I def disagree with both you. Thinking God is impartial is dangerous point of view. I also don't think religion is bullshit. All religions in general serve a purpose. That type of frontal lobe activity is what served as rules and laws before civilization developed. It seperrated us from the beasts.”

Beliefs can be false and practical. To argue that religion is useful is not to argue for the truth of religion. Religion can be the most useful thing in the world, and the most untrue. The video below may be of interest.

“As for the questions about the contradiction of free will my dude put forth over here the answer is there is no contradiction. Not if you're really talking about a truly omniscient being. We could still have free will with him maintaining his divinity. Think about it your concept of freewill is also restrained with the concept of time from a humans perspective.”

The poster's thoughts are also restrained by the concept of time from a human perspective, unless he has the miraculous ability to think from the perspective of a non-human.

“For argument purpose I can say that a truly divine bieng could simultaneously exist in the past present and future at once.”

Well, he could say this, but there is no reason to believe that this is possible, or that even if there is such a thing as a divine being that being able to exist in the past, present, and future would necessarily be something this divine being could do. Before this argument can be taken further, one needs to justify the assumption of this property.

“Not only that but he would exist in all VERSIONS of the past present and future at once. This allows you your free will and he still maintains is omnipotence.”

Free will is an incoherent concept to begin with. I would need “free will” to be defined, and then it would need to be defended.  This argument can't get off  the ground without these two things. The problem with "free will" is best articulated by Sam Harris.

After making sense of the basic concept of free will (good luck), one still has to show how it makes sense to say there is free will in Christianity. The video below shows the utter nonsense of the claim if we're talking about free will a more layman sense:

I'm not sure why Christians even bring up free will. It's not even a Biblical concept, so I'm wondering where this belief that Yahweh gives people free will even comes from. Judging by the Bible, there are many reasons to believe that free will is not compatible with Christianity:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/free.html

“Another thing God has never enslaved not the biblical God.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

According to the Bible, Yahweh endorsed slavery. Why wasn't "thou shall not enslave" a commandment, anyway? I will agree with the claim that the Biblical god didn't enslave only on the grounds that he never existed to enslave anyone.

“He has judged and will judge its his job and right as the creator.”

This is an opinion. “X created Y; therefore X has the obligation and right to judge and punish Y.” That is a personal judgment—albeit one that many people share, but still an opinion. Rights and obligations do not exist outside of minds. They are derived from minds, and are therefore subjective. Quite simply, they are made up. I could easily say the contrary--that it would not be his job or right to judge anyone or anything, and we would be stuck with two opinions.

Now, the poster might say, "But this is not my opinion. God created this rule. And as the creator, he gets to make up the rules."

Again, that would be a made up rule based on the god's opinion on what should be the case.

“He has also killed for the biblical God in all his infinite mercies is also a vengeful one, but if you look at the staggering amount of death and disparity that has plagued the human race over the course of it's existence that is not God. Not the biblical.”

To be infinitely merciful and vengeful to any degree is a contradiction. It makes as much sense to say that I am an infinitely calm being--except when I'm excited. Mercy is suspended when an act of vengeance occurs. If a god were to commit an act of vengeance, there is obviously a limit to its mercy--it is not infinitely merciful. The god who commits no acts of vengeance, who shows mercy in every instance, would be the god who is infinitely merciful. Any other god fails to be infinitely merciful.

“Any atheist would or opponent of my position would argue about why trust the christian interpretation of the universes mysteries and explanations for life and death. Well simply put it is the most trust worthy of all the religions.”

To make this claim, one would have to have studied the literally tens of thousands of religions to have ever existed. I would be willing to bet that no human being alive has done this. I would be interested in hearing evidence for this claim, though. Why is Christianity less trustworthy than, say, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, etc.? Has the poster truly done a fair comparison of all religions?

“Do more research on that any self respecting Academic Scholar not restrained with bias will vouch for that statement.”

I would like some evidence for this claim. Is there a poll that shows that scholars deem the Christian religion to be the most trustworthy? I don't understand this appeal to authority here. Given current academic standards, the claim doesn't make sense. The vast majority of universities, academic journals, and publishers do not accept religious scripture as evidence of anything other than what scripture says. Backing up an argument with Biblical support is considered to be invalid and unsophisticated amongst scholars and academics. I thought this was general knowledge. I shouldn't have to explain this to anyone who has taken a college course--even a high school course. If scholars considered the religion so trustworthy, academic standards would be drastically different.

I don't think the poster wants to play the game of appealing to what most academics would vouch for. He would, then, have to deal with the fact that the vast majority of scientists accept evolution as fact. That is a claim that can actually be proven with a five-second Google search, unlike the wild claim presented here about Christianity's standing amongst academics.

And does "most trustworthy" mean that all its major and miraculous claims are trustworthy or accepted by academia? Since most trustworthy is relative, a religion can be the most trustworthy and still have, say, 95% of its claims written off as untrustworthy. To me, the "most trustworthy religion" sounds like "least oppressive dictatorship." Not exactly a compliment, is it?

Still, I would love to hear the argument for this claim.

“From the accuracy of both the old and new testaments to the legitimacy Jesus Christs existence.”

Again, let’s get some evidence for this accuracy. Jesus’ existence is still disputed among historians, but that is beside the point. It's dubious, but I'm willing to grant that a man named Jesus existed at the time and went around preaching in ancient Israel. Someone named Jesus merely existing at the time, and doing or saying some of things attributed to him, does not mean that he did or said all of the things attributed to him. The miracle claims in the Bible are not considered historical facts among historians (I guess scholars don't find the religion very trustworthy at all), and they can’t be proven by mere existence of a person. If someone, 500 years from now, wants to claim that I had telepathic powers, producing a photo that proved my existence would not be evidence for their claim.

There is more historical evidence for Muhammad, Joseph Smith, and Sathya Sai Baba, and many people (thousands alive today in the case of Sathya Sai Baba) who will vouch for supposed miracles. Why not believe them? Are Joseph Smith's claims true because we have photos of him? Below is a list of other figures who have supposedly performed miracles, most of whom have more evidence for their existence than Jesus. Why does a Christian accept the miracle claims of their religion, and not others?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle#Individuals

“Coming full circle to this misleading quote I'd like to first say*Clears thorat* RICHARD DAWKINS IS A POMPOUS ASSHOLE. Not realizing that he's effectively created a new religion called evolution.”

Let’s get a definition of religion here. This claim is absurd.

I should also take the time to remind the Christian poster of the words of Jesus, who certainly wouldn't appreciate the language used here:

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister^[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’^[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5-7&version=NIV

“Complete with its own holy text Darwin's Theory on the Origin of Species. In fact take a freshman college anthropology class and the whole discipline of science falls under the definition of a religion. I'm not trying to say science doesn't have merits I'm not an idiot, all religions have truths and lies. Your job is to sift through the garbage and find what the actual truth is. I'm not against religion specifically I am not against the christian religion. Because I believe THIS particular religion and its most basic and fundamental level.... IS THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. Amen!”

In the interview below, Richard Dawkins, Darwin's biggest defender, says "Of course [Darwin] was wrong on many things" and "Darwin wasn’t right about everything."

http://natgeotv.com/uk/dawkins-darwin-evolution/dawkins-interview-darwin

Does this sound like a holy text? Would Christians say this about Jesus or Yahweh or the Bible?

The poster here demonstrates a staggering ignorance of the history of evolutionary biology. On the Origin of Species (from here out referred to as Origin) laid out some foundational ideas that have been proven to be true a million times over, but it's far from complete or infallible. No one would call it "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" as the poster does his religion. This line of thinking is contradictory to Dawkins' perspective, as demonstrated above. After a century and a half of gathering evidence and testing the theory, some of Darwin's ideas have been confirmed and expanded on, and some of them have been discarded. No idea has been accepted by scientific consensus by virtue of being an idea of Darwin's.

Darwin's basic ideas are still accepted amongst both atheistic and theistic scientists. While still indebted to Darwin and Origin, evolutionary biology has moved miles beyond both. If someone really wants to learn about evolution, it would better to read several recent publications that bring the Darwinian foundation to the table and everything scientists have learned and discovered in the past 150 years or so after Darwin introduced the theory. The bulk of evolutionary knowledge has come post-Darwin (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought).

To isolate Origin like this is to ignore the contributions of Fisher, Dobzhansky, Haldane, Mayr, Rensch, etc. (the list goes on and on) is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of the history of evolutionary biology. Quite frankly it is insulting to the many scientists who have made profound contributions to the field—contributions that would blow Darwin’s mind if he were around to learn about them.

Again, I would love to hear this person’s definition of religion, and how science or evolution is a religion. Most academics, religious and secular, would not say that science fits the definition of a religion; no one with a dictionary and integrity would say this. This can be demonstrated by the fact that science and religious departments are separate at universities across the world. All of this makes the suggestion to "take a freshman anthropology course..." seem silly. Define religion, and show how science is one.

The problem with people so knee-deep in their religious way of thinking is that they have an inability to comprehend others' way of thinking. This is why people want to make these false comparisons of religion/science, or Bible/Origin. They seem to assume that people think in the same way they do. Because they cannot imagine life without their religious beliefs, they seem to make the assumption that whatever non-religious beliefs or modes of knowing others have must really function in the same way as their religious beliefs or modes of knowing. It seems that people have the impression that biologists just sit around reading Darwin all day, that the last 150 years or so of evolutionary biology has consisted of close readings of this one book. That's the impression that is given by people who oversimplify the importance of, or only mention, this one text as if evolutionary biology rests on this one text, this one man. That's just not the case, and to treat it as such is uninformed.

Here is a fundamental difference that this poster is missing. Christians treat the Bible as evidence. They say, “Here is a claim, and here is the passage that proves the claim"-- the famous "for the bible tells me so" mentality, and an utterly unsophisticated and indefensible epistemological framework. In other words, a claim is evidence simply by virtue of being in the Bible. This is not the case with anything written in Origin, or any science book. Biologists do not say that all species evolved from others because Darwin tells me so. Everything that Darwin introduced—the claims and the evidence—has been tested and challenged by scientists for the past 150 years. Some ideas were kept and some were dropped, all depending on how much the evidence confirmed or refuted them. Throughout the history of evolutionary theory, there has not been one claim of Darwin’s that has been accepted simply by virtue of being made by Darwin or written in Origin. Evolution is grounded in physical evidence, not words. Followers of the Bible consider words to be evidence. With evolution, the words merely report and explain the evidence. To suggest that Darwin's writings are regarded as holy is inconsequential rhetoric that shouldn't be taken seriously. To suggest that science functions like religion in any way is to misunderstand both science and religion.

Theistic attacks on evolution and science are misguided. Quite frankly, evolution and science don't care about god. What I mean to say is that science and evolution are concerned with the natural world; they do not seek to prove or disprove anyone's god because the god question is not addressed. The attacks on evolution seem to stem from the fact that evolution does refute literal interpretations of certain creation myths.






If the poster accepts the challenge, he can post his response in the comment section, or he can email his post to me and I will copy and paste it here as its own entry. I prefer the latter.