Hard Questions?

Here a very silly person lists 20 questions he thinks atheists are incapable of answering.

Some of them are just question-begging, such as "What caused the universe to exist?". Ignoring the fact that causality is not very well-defined, how do we even know for certain that the universe was caused? And if atheists cannot answer this question, it's not like the theist answer ("God created it") provides any more insight.

Other questions are downright strange, such as "Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000BC?" What this has to do with theism or atheism is beyond me. Mesopotamia had cities even earlier, in 4000-3500 B.C.E. In any event, probably the development of agriculture led to the formation of cities, and once this innovation occurred, it would have spread through trade.

Question 10 asks, "How do we account for self-awareness?" This has a relatively easy answer. Through natural selection, organisms come to model their environment. Sometimes this modelling is reflected in their geometric structure: a camel has a very different body profile than a shark. But organisms also sense the natural world and react to it. Having a better model -- one that allows an organism to predict future events in the world -- clearly would contribute to better survival and reproductive success. As the model becomes more sophisticated, eventually it will have to encompass the organism itself. Self-awareness is just when your model of the world becomes so detailed that it has to include yourself.

I won't spend any more time on this silly list, but readers should feel free to chime in with their own answers.

Dear Charles Lewis: You're a Dishonest Bigot

If you can stomach it, read this appalling piece of dreck by Charles Lewis, religion writer for the National Post.

It's hard to know what to make of it, other than that Lewis is terribly, terribly threatened by the rising popularity of atheism and atheist writers. He doesn't seem to know a damn thing about atheists, but believes they are all horrible, boring utopians.

As evidence of this, he trots out Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, and labels them "dreary". Hitchens, dreary? Lewis must be living in some bizarro universe where dreary means "vastly entertaining".

If I had to name a single famous person I'd love to have dinner with, it would be Hitchens, who knows much more about politics and history than I do, and is witty to boot. Dawkins would be a close second. Come to think of it, having them both for dinner would be perfect: Hitchens can talk about art, history, and politics, and Dawkins can talk about science.

I understand perfectly well why Lewis feels threatened by Hitchens. It was Hitchens who wrote The Missionary Position, exposing Mother Teresa as a pious fraud who loved poverty and suffering for everyone except herself. Lewis, who himself wrote on Mother Teresa, can't accept that characterization. But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

Lewis claims "most atheists do not have a clue what religion is about". Like most bigots, though, he doesn't present a shred of evidence for this claim. If he bothered to look at the evidence, though, he'd conclude just the opposite: atheists know more about religion than Protestants and Catholics.

Lewis gives North Korea as an example of a "godless society". But he doesn't dare mention the European social democracies, such as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, all of which are good examples of peaceful, prosperous societies with significantly lower levels of religious belief than either Canada or the US. Nor does Lewis mention the behavior of officially religious societies, such as Afghanistan. That's simple dishonesty. Perhaps Lewis should review the Ten Commandments -- as I recall, there was this prohibition against "bear[ing] false witness".

Lewis claims "Atheists are under the ridiculous illusion that religious people think that all they have to do is call out to God and help will be on the way". Well, no. Atheists know that there is a huge variety of religious belief, and we also know that many Christians do believe exactly what Lewis says they don't. Pretending that this is not a large strain of North American religious belief is, simply, dishonest.

Lewis says "Faith is not up for debate". Well, I've got news for you, Chuck: you're wrong. In a free society, you don't get a pass because you call your beliefs "faith" and pronounce them off limits. Can't justify them? Fine with me. Just don't expect me, or anyone else to take you seriously.

I can just imagine the reaction if Lewis wrote a column entitled "Dear Jews: most of us don't care what you think". No doubt he'd be fired in a minute. But criticizing atheists is just fine.

Why on earth is the National Post employing this ignorant bigot?

Why Do William Lane Craig's Views Merit Respect?

William Lane Craig seems, for some reason that I've never understood, to garner disproportionate respect from theists and even some nontheists. (But then, I'm also mystified by the cult around C. S. Lewis, who seems to me to be a sloppy and childish thinker.)

Take a look at this debate entitled "Does the Universe have a purpose?" and see if Craig lives up to his reputation. Of course, in debates, where there is a limited time, we are all forced to simplify our statements, so perhaps Craig doesn't really believe exactly what he is saying. Nevertheless...

In his opening statement (jump to 13:41) , he piled false claim upon false claim. For example:

"If God does exist, then the universe does have a purpose." Really? That doesn't follow. Just because an intelligent being makes a thing X, that is insufficient to show that X has a purpose. After all, I could pick up a couple of rocks aimlessly at the seashore and put one on top of the other. What would be the purpose of that pile of rocks? Perhaps there is none at all.

"According to Biblical theism ... The purpose of life is to be found in a personal relationship with a holy and loving God. As the Westminster catechism asks, What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever." Huh? This was a non sequitur. The subject of the debate was whether the universe had a purpose, not the purpose of life or man.

Craig relied upon a false dichotomy - the only two choices he presented are "Biblical theism" and "atheism". But these are clearly not the only possibilities. Why couldn't the Universe have been made by a nasty and childish god, who delights in tormenting us in new and ingenious ways? Maybe the purpose of the Universe is to amuse this god with our suffering. Or perhaps there are multiple gods, each wagering on our behavior when confronted with new diseases or painful medical procedures.

"God gives an objectively purposeful life." Not true, since we have no objective way to determine this purpose. Craig think the purpose is spelled out in his holy book. Another might say the purpose is spelled out in a different book. We have no objective way to determine which is correct... or maybe they're all wrong. Maybe a god designed our universe for the purpose of making atheism the single world belief.

"What is evil? - I maintain that evil is a departure from the way things ought to be..." Let's look at the sensibility of this definition. Perhaps I think the way things "ought to be" are that we should all have jet cars and live on Mars. Since the current state of affairs is different from the way things "ought to be", using Craig's definition I would have to say the current state of affairs is "evil". But this would not be assented to by most people who use the word "evil". Yet if I say, "Hitler was evil", this would be assented to by most people. So Craig's definition does not capture the way most people use the word "evil".

"If there is a way things ought to be, then there must be some transcendent design plan or purpose that determines how things ought to be. And so there must be some transcendent being - a Creator in fact - whose will is the basis for how things ought to be. And so evil is actually evidence that God does exist." This doesn't follow at all. Why could not a sense of "the way things ought to be" be the product of biological evolution?

And to top it all off, this was delivered with a kind of wheezy smugness out of proportion to the quality of the arguments. Bleh.

Atheism - The Energy-Efficient Worldview

Spotted on a bus in Boston yesterday:



I guess that makes atheism the energy-efficient worldview. Go green!

They're So Predictable

When you read a theist's denunciation of atheism, one thing is certain: you are not likely to find any original criticisms. Instead you'll find the usual nonsense:

• Atheists are "dogmatic" and their criticisms are "shrill".
  
• Deep down, atheists really believe in a god.
  
• Atheists have mental problems.
  
• Atheists are hateful.
  
• Atheists have no moral code.
  

etc., etc. For more along these lines, see my account of Tim Kenyon's talk last January.

Now look at this silly opinion piece by Dow Marmur, a "rabbi emeritus" at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. How many of the atheism myths can you find?

The wonder is that the Toronto Star found this drivel suitable for publication. At least the letters published in response, including one from Larry Moran, uniformly disagree with the good rabbi emeritus.

Hat tip: Ed Barsalou.