Notes from an Evil Burnee

Am I no true atheist?

2012-02-14T20:24:00.000Z

I'm a bit worried about my credentials as an atheist ("gnu" or otherwise). I know who the Four Horsemen are, but I couldn't tell you which came first (was it Dennett or Harris?). Off the top of my head I can't give you the entire URL for Pharyngula, nor can I reliably list all the hosts of the Atheist Experience TV show. I know there were lots of historical figures who professed atheism, but I certainly couldn't list them.

As if these failings weren't serious enough, I find I'm also unable to recite the full title of Charles Darwin's seminal work known for short as The Origin. Surely no true atheist would fail so miserably at declaring atheism's central dogmas?

Oh wait. Atheism has no dogmas, so I've nothing to declare but my lack of belief in a god or gods.

In an amusing but spurious bit of table-turning, this morning Richard Dawkins found himself being put on the spot by Giles Fraser on the Today Programme. Dawkins was unable to reel off the The Origin's full title when challenged to do so, and for this embarrassing blanking of mind in the heat of a live radio discussion some Christians have unjustly accused him of hypocrisy.

To those Christians I would say you're missing the point. Listen to the radio piece itself:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9696000/9696135.stm

Here's the Today Programme's page on it:

Research carried out by for a secularist foundation has suggested that most of those who describe themselves as Christian in Britain have only a low level of belief and practice of the religion.

A poll carried out by Ipsos-Mori for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science indicated that half of those in Britain who say they are Christian rarely go to church while nearly 60% do not read the Bible.

Prof Richard Dawkins, founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, told the Today programme's Justin Webb that most people who call themselves Christian merely "tick the Christian box".

When asked whether the figures told us anything of use, Professor Dawkins insisted it "told us an awful lot" because it puts into doubt the place of Christian practices in society such as bishops in House of Lords and the presence of faith schools.

However Reverend Giles Fraser, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's, called the findings "extraordinary" and maintained that it was not fair to trump people's "self identification" as Christians.

He said that "there are all sorts of ways to express Christianity" and that we should not be "purging religion from the public square".

Dawkins' fumbling with The Origin's full title was cringe-making but irrelevant, and here's why. Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection — Or The Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life is not a sacred text. Dawkins might have been expected, given his area of expertise, to rise to Fraser's challenge, but the fact that on this occasion he was unable to do so means nothing more than that he had a temporary memory lapse. Such lapses are not unusual — most people have them. This particular lapse doesn't mean that Dawkins isn't a "true atheist", nor does it mean the points he was making aren't valid.

Giles Fraser tried, as religionists often do, to make atheism and Christianity somehow equivalent — two sides of the same coin. They're not. Christianity has sacred scripture containing common beliefs about supernatural events and persons, along with "moral" laws and "moral" guidance. Atheism has none of these things. All atheism has is lack of belief in any deity.

The survey in question, however, shows that a majority of people who self-identify as Christians don't meet the criteria that Christianity is commonly taken to involve. They don't know the scripture, they don't hold the beliefs and they don't follow the guidance. Their self-identification should not, therefore, be taken by policy-makers as an indication that a majority of people hold to Christian beliefs, when clearly they don't. There are religious factions in government, however, who seem so desperate to preserve religion's disproportionate influence, they are willing to misrepresent what people believe.

Giles Fraser claims it's unfair to say that people who self-identify as Christians are not really Christian just because they don't know the scripture, don't hold the beliefs and don't follow the guidance. In effect he's saying that just because people who are atheists in all but name still self-identify as Christian, it's unfair to describe them as not Christian. Maybe he's right; people should be allowed to call themselves whatever they want. But this shouldn't give the government an excuse to impose "Christian" laws on a population who, despite what they say, are clearly not Christian in the generally accepted meaning of the term.

And if atheists have no dogmas, can't recite a creed, and don't read Darwin — this too is no excuse for imposing "Christian" law.

Burnee links for Monday

2012-02-13T22:38:00.000Z

Jack of Kent: Lord Carey's "Terrifying Prospect"
David Allen Green comments on Lord Carey's knotted underwear.

God squad weighs in over NSS’s successful challenge to council prayers
A good summary. The God squad is right to worry that the secular nature of government is at last being confirmed, because it will inevitably reduce religion's influence — and that's a good thing.

The Archbishop and Science - steve's posterous
"There is no scientifically moderate theism." I've heard so-called religious moderates claim that the world, the universe, right down to the level of fundamental particles, is not just created but sustained by God, as if a momentary distraction might cause him to lose track of some intricate maintenance he is meticulously attending to, thus allowing some untold physical catastrophe to occur. It's truly amazing what even religious moderates will claim to believe.

The scale of the universe (enhanced) | HumanistLife
Follow the link on that site. Really, follow it — you'll be amazed. It's the Total Perspective Vortex — flash version.

Christian hotel owners lose appeal against discrimination ruling
A victory for fairness and non-discrimination in business.

Burden of proof

2012-02-13T21:20:00.000Z

Does the sandwich exist?

I can see it in front of me. "The sandwich exists," I'm told. And there it is. While I'm looking at it I might want to consider the possibility that despite what I see, and what I'm told, the sandwich does not, in fact, exist.

On the whole, though, I believe the sandwich exists.

But what if, while I sit here looking at it, someone comes along and tells me that the sandwich does not exist? I point at the sandwich, but this person vehemently denies the existence of the sandwich. I shake my head and say, "I believe the sandwich exists." I can see it, touch it, smell it, even eat it (though this last option will, I can tell, have implications for the continued existence of the sandwich). This person — this sandwich denier — then proceeds to explain to me that the sandwich does not exist, and proves it by gesturing a hand through what I thought was the sandwich. The sandwich, it turns out, is not a sandwich but a hologram. I have to concede, therefore, that the sandwich that I thought existed does not, in fact, exist.

Hold on a minute! It may be a hologram, but it's a hologram of a sandwich. The sandwich itself must exist somewhere, for this holographic projection of it to be here. Not so, explains the sandwich denier. The hologram was made by a clever graphic artist with access to some impressive aromagraphic technology. The sandwich itself does not exist.

Whether I cease to believe in the existence of the sandwich as a result of this exchange is neither here nor there. The point is, I had very good evidence that the sandwich did, in fact, exist. The sandwich denier wanted to convince me that it didn't exist, and shouldered the burden of proof to do so.

Let's take another example. Does God exist?

I don't see him. I don't experience any of those things theists describe as revelation. I look at the natural world and see the results of unguided natural processes. There are many things about the world I don't understand and can't explain, but none of these mysteries is made clearer by the suggestion that God had a part in them. In most cases the addition of a deity/creator only adds paradox and makes things more difficult to explain.

Nevertheless, while I'm looking at the natural world I might want to consider the possibility that despite the lack of evidence for his existence, God does, in fact, exist. Anyone wishing to convince me that God exists would need to provide the evidence that so far I haven't encountered. But in the absence of such evidence I feel no obligation to provide counter evidence. Unlike the sandwich that sits in front of me — apparently physical evidence of its own existence — God is not manifest in any comparable way, and therefore does not need to be disproved.

On the whole, therefore, I don't believe God exists.

So what was I feeling when I touched the sandwich? Was my cognition, and my reporting of it, biased by my presupposition about the existence of the sandwich...?

Atheism 2.0 — fundamentally misconceived

2012-02-11T23:38:00.000Z

Alain de Botton wants to take what he sees as the "good" things of religion and borrow them for atheism. He particularly likes religious buildings, which he seems to think provide examples of something that "atheism" — as some kind of movement — could usefully build. The problem with this approach is that it appears to accept the notion that atheism as a "thing" is in the same category as that other thing — religion.

It's not. According to Dictionary.com the definition of religion is this:

a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Atheism on the other hand is not that. It's not a set of beliefs, it's the absence of belief in a god or gods. It involves no devotional or ritual observances, and says nothing at all about a moral code. Whatever religion is, atheism is not that.

Alain de Botton seems to regret that atheism is not that, and while he wouldn't accept the superhuman agency he seems to want to co-opt some of the "devotional and ritual observances".

On Justin Brierley's Unbelievable? radio programme today Alain de Botton stated that he doesn't really care for the nitty gritty details of science, and it seems that this barely concealed disdain for the hard facts of reality could be at the root of his less-than-rigorous approach to truth — an approach that sets him apart from other philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and A. C. Grayling. And of course Alain de Botton is far too nice to come out with full-blown condemnation of religious belief like Richard Dawkins and his ilk are wont to do. (His niceness was on full display in his conversation with James Orr today, but he was, almost literally, on his own ground.)

Alain de Botton already appears to be borrowing aspects of religion, such as the insistence that an absence of religion will inevitably leave a void requiring to be filled. This is not so, in the same way that removing a cancerous tumour from the body does not require something in its place.

His idea that there ought to be a community for atheists seems to me — someone who has not read his book — to be fundamentally misguided. There is already a community for atheists and people of a secular humanist turn of worldview; it's called humanity. We secular humanists (I count myself among them) can do what others do when when they don't go to church, such as attend or partake in sports, go down the pub, go to the movies, theatre, sightseeing, evening classes, quiz nights, museums, art galleries — or even skeptics conferences if we are so inclined.

All of these are communities of different kinds; pick one (or more) as you like. There's no need for something to serve as an ersatz church.

Alain de Botton gave a TED talk recently on the theme of his book:

Illustrating a bad influence in American politics — BBC Radio 4

2012-02-11T16:35:00.000Z

Beyond Belief, BBC Radio 4's discussion programme about faith matters, was this week about the Republican nomination for US presidential candidate. Here's the blurb from the Radio 4 website:

What role does religion play in the race for the Republican nomination for the White House?

Ernie Rea is joined by Bob Vander Plaats, head of "The Family Leader" pressure group, Boo Tyson from "Coalition Mainstream" and Dr Alexander Smith from Huddersfield University. Together they assess the influence of the Religious Right on Republican politics, and whether Americans might be ready for a Mormon president.

Some of the talk was sensible, and some was just idiotic. The dire straits of America's so-called "separation of church and state" was amply illustrated by this final exchange in the programme's closing minute, when host Ernie Rae asked each of his guests the same question:

ERNIE RAE: Do you think that a publicly declared atheist could win the presidency at this point in time?

BOO TYSON: No. No I don't, and I think you would be hard pressed to win "dog-catcher" for County Commissioner, much less be the president of the United States, who takes an oath with "under God" in it, and on a Bible.

ALEXANDER SMITH: I suspect not. No. And in fact interestingly, I mean, Ron Paul, who we haven't talked about in this discussion, is probably the closest candidate you could come to who might be described as something of an agnostic. But you know, he's trailing well behind, and obviously isn't much of a prospect.

BOB VANDER PLAATS: I certainly hope not. For us to say that an atheist could lead this country, I sure hope we're not at that point. If we are, I believe God would have every right to remove his blessing from this country.

That last response is precisely what's wrong with religious influence in American politics.

The audio of this programme is available for streaming until the end of the century (or thereabouts):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01blgp2

Adam Rutherford and the creation of life

2012-02-07T22:15:00.000Z

Tomorrow evening I'll be at the annual Darwin Day Lecture held by the British Humanist Association. This year it will be delivered by Adam Rutherford:

I attended last year's lecture by Armand Leroi, which was excellent, so I'm looking forward to hearing what, if anything, Adam Rutherford has to say about "Creation". He's known to be provocative when it comes to matters of religious faith, so depending on the audience make-up the Q&A (if there is one) could be lively.

The claims of religious faith are not exempt

2012-02-07T21:26:00.000Z

The HOTS Bath advertising nonsense seems to have shaken out those wedded to religious privilege. Hayley Stevens has done us all a favour in highlighting it with her ASA complaint.

Brendan O'Neill at the Telegraph seems to be one of the more belligerent fulminators against the ASA's ruling:

This is an outrageous attack on freedom of religion, on the basic right of people to express central tenets of their faith.

Central tenets such as, for instance, homosexuality is an abomination? Or those who don't believe in Jesus/God are destined for "eternal conscious torment"? Or that contraception is an evil worse than AIDS? Granted, these aren't exactly touted around as attractive propositions you might want to try out on the streets around Bath Abbey, but they are as without factual basis as anything promoted by snake-oil salesmen.

You have a recently deceased relative? A central tenet of some religious faith is that God can bring a dead person back to life. Should we allow a religious group to make such a specific claim on the streets of Bath, or anywhere else for that matter? We should not. But by law we must. The ASA covers published advertising only, so any oral claims of resurrection made on the streets are beyond its remit. But apparently HOTS Bath did claim, in their leaflets and on their website, that serious illness can be alleviated by prayer. This is a medical claim, and they provide no acceptable evidence to support it. The ASA was right, therefore, to put a stop to it.

O'Neill is simply illustrating the undeserved privilege religious faith has enjoyed for so long — a privilege built into UK political culture — and which religion in general will try to hang on to for as long as it can.

Elsewhere in the Telegraph Tom Chivers gives the side of sanity:

This isn't an outrageous attack on religion. People are still allowed to believe, and state that they believe, in obvious nonsense like faith healing. But advertising laws can't be redrawn just because someone decides their product is religious; if they make actual empirical medical claims, then they need to be able to provide actual empirical medical evidence.

Personally I'd like to see some actual empirical evidence for religious faith's other claims too.

(Via HumanistLife.)

Burnee links for Sunday

2012-02-05T17:00:00.000Z

In Antithesis, Vol 2, No. 1
Choosing Hats has published another issue of its apologetics journal. I read Stephen Rodgers' article "The New Atheism, Fast Company, and the Integrity of Doubt". Despite the obscure title the article is engagingly written (if a bit wordy at times — and Rodgers has a fondness for footnotes that leak all over the feet of adjacent pages) but there's little of substance there. Basically his thesis is, "New Atheism? Pfft! We've seen it all before." So that's it folks: to rebut the "Four Horsemen" all you need to do is claim you already have. I do object, however, to Rodgers' maligning the honesty of Sam Harris. Stooping to such low tactics reveals the underlying desperation of the apologetic method.

“It’s Part of their Culture” - Reading Nick Cohen in the light of the Jaipur affair - Richard Dawkins - RD.net - RichardDawkins.net
Some "cultures", however, are inherently bad.

UK Advertising Standards Authority try and stop Healing on the Streets | News | Bible Reflections | prayer, healing
HOTS Bath still not getting it.

Anoka, our little blight on the prairie | Pharyngula
Hard to take. But these kids have been ill-served. Children are the future of humanity — don't neglect them.

New Rule: Atheism is not a religion! Unbaptizes Mitt Romney's Dead Father-In-Law! - YouTube
Bill Maher nails Mormon ludicrousness (ludicrity? ludicrosity? whatever...)

The Road to Hell

2012-02-05T16:00:00.000Z

"What About Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?"

This is the title of chapter 40 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, and once again it's a chapter that seems to be in the wrong section. I'm currently reading the section titled The Question of Jesus, and this chapter should clearly be in the final section, The Question of the Bible — it is, after all, about the Gospel. True, Michael R. Licona is following on from his previous chapter about whether Jesus is the only path to God, but it nevertheless seems out of place.

That said, this chapter reveals more of the quagmire that Christians stir up for themselves when they insist on taking the Bible as written (or inspired) by the all-powerful creator of the universe. The essence of Licona's thesis here is that there are two types of revelation from God: general revelation and special revelation. (Unbidden, an image of God looking remarkably like Albert Einstein springs to mind.) General revelation is a knowledge of God apparent in Creation (with, naturally, a capital 'C'), and special revelation is a knowledge of God made available through the Gospel. If you reject either of these revelations you're damned to Hell.

According to Romans chapter one, God has made some of his invisible attributes known through the world in which we live. The stars, the sun, the moon, the ocean, and many other wonders of nature were not the work of a bull, a horse, a calf, or a man. These are the products of a cosmic designer of immense intelligence. In Romans chapter 2, Paul tells us that God has instilled basic knowledge of his moral laws in our conscience, so that, instinctively, we know that actions such as rape, murder, stealing, and falsehood are immoral. We all are accountable to God for immoral actions we have committed of varying degrees. Theologians refer to this type of knowledge as general revelation. In other words, given our universe and our conscience, we should be aware that a God of some sort exists and that we have failed to live up to his moral law.

I don't accept the notion that "the world in which we live" is the product of "a cosmic designer of immense intelligence". For me, the evidence for such designer simply isn't as compelling as the evidence for the alternative hypothesis — that the world in which we live is the result of natural processes, without the intervention of a supernatural agent. Therefore, according to Licona, I'm damned even if I never encounter the Gospel.

According to Licona, those who do accept the idea of a cosmic designer, but — for whatever reason — believe that the designer is some deity other than Jesus/God fall into one of two categories: those who have never encountered the Gospel, and those who have. The first category are granted salvation by virtue of their honest, blameless ignorance; the second — sorry, you got the wrong god, despite being shown the right one, so to Hell with your sinful soul.

Several times Licona admits that the Bible doesn't have specific answers to particular questions, and resorts to what he calls speculation. This, it appears, is a code-word for what Christians seem to do quite a lot in their "interpretation" of scripture — that is, they simply make stuff up.

Let’s summarize. We’ve faced the difficult questions pertaining to the fate of those who die without ever having heard the gospel as well as that of babies and the mentally handicapped who lack the mental capacity to understand the gospel. Since the Bible does not directly address either of these questions, speculation pertaining to possible solutions is our only course of action. However, we may look at other situations in which God has acted and get a glimpse into his character. We observed two divine principles: (1) God judges us according to our response to the knowledge about him we are given. At minimal, this knowledge consists of the fact that there is a Creator to whom we will stand accountable for our moral failures. (2) God does not hold accountable those who lack the mental capacity to choose between good and evil.

Licona's two divine principles each appear to be fundamentally problematic: (1) that there is a Creator is not a fact but a Christian presupposition unsupported by compelling evidence, and (2) according to Genesis God does indeed hold accountable those who lack the mental capacity to choose between good and evil. Adam and Eve were specifically denied the knowledge of good and evil, yet according to the story God still held them accountable, to the extent that their "sin" is visited on every single human being since.

My own take on this "problem" is that it isn't a problem at all, but merely one more part of the obfuscation necessary in attempting to resolve something that doesn't make sense in the first place.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952889

Burnee links for Friday

2012-02-03T23:32:00.000Z

The absurd whiteness of Be Scofield | Pharyngula
PZ Myers is tempted to dismiss yet more bashing of "New Atheists".

The hounding of 'Psychic Sally' is becoming a modern-day witch-hunt – Telegraph Blogs
The hounding of skeptics for their rational demand for evidence in support of extraordinary claims is becoming a modern-day witch-hunt. Witchfinder-General Brendan O'Neill is — at best — apparently happy to let "psychics" spread their delusions to vulnerable people, or — at worst — happy to let known frauds continue to defraud the vulnerable.

AlbertMohler.com – The President, the Pill, and Religious Liberty in Peril
This tenor of this article is similar to the attitude of the Catholic Church in the UK — complaining that their religious liberty is infringed, when what they really care about is that they're no longer allowed to discriminate unfairly. But there's another point apparent here. What US law seems to be saying is that employers must provide health insurance, which must include the availability of contraception. Mohler's article is objecting to employers having to pay for something (contraception) that may be against their religious beliefs, but as far as I can tell that is not what will happen. Employers will provide insurance, and that insurance will comply with the law. Employers will not, in fact, be buying contraception, any more than an employer buys the food bought with an employee's salary. If Mohler were a vegetarian and employed someone who wasn't, would he object to his employee buying meat? If Mohler hated football, would he object to his employee buying tickets for a football game? An employer pays an employee for work, skills and experience. What the employee does with the salary is the employee's own affair. If employment law requires an employer to pay for health insurance, any claim the employee makes on that insurance is likewise the employee's own affair.
(Via Chris Bolt.)

The believer’s inner needs | Butterflies and Wheels
Ophelia Benson reads Kenan Malik's talk with which he opened the CFI Blasphemy! Conference.

Too Westernized, secular and progressive to be authentic | Butterflies and Wheels
And goes on reading...

ASA rules against faith-healing claims

2012-02-03T22:50:00.000Z

First it was the BBC:

Bath Christian group's 'God can heal' adverts banned

A Christian group has been banned from claiming that God can heal illnesses on its website and in leaflets.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had concluded that the adverts by Healing on the Streets (HOTS) - Bath, were misleading. It said a leaflet available to download from the group's website said: "Need Healing? God can heal today!" The group, based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, said it was disappointed with the decision and would appeal. HOTS Bath said its vision was to promote Christian healing "as a daily lifestyle for every believer".

But the BBC was cagey about the origin of the complaint:

The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible. HOTS Bath said: "It seems very odd to us that the ASA wants to prevent us from stating on our website the basic Christian belief that God can heal illness.

It's not odd, it's the law. HOTS Bath may consider it a "basic Christian belief that God can heal illness" but unless they can substantiate that claim they have no business putting it in an ad on a website, and therefore the ASA ruling is correct.

The ASA didn't reveal the identity of the complainant. Said complainant, however, was understandably aggrieved at the statement subsequently placed on the HOTS website:

It appears that the complaint to the ASA was made by a group generally opposed to Christianity, and it seems strange to us that on the basis of a purely ideological objection to what we say on our website, the ASA has decided it is appropriate to insist that we cannot talk about a common and widely held belief that is an important aspect of conventional Christian faith.

Hayley Stevens, well-known skeptic and paranormal investigator — and the complainant in this case — decided to put the record straight on her blog, Hayley is a Ghost, despite the adverse publicity likely to result. This was then taken up by the Bath Chronicle, which quotes Hayley on her reasons for making the complaint to the ASA. Still HOTS Bath fail to understand the issue at hand, illustrating the de facto privileged position religious faith continues to enjoy — and expect — in the UK. They maintain the ASA (and by extension Hayley Stevens herself, as complainant) are objecting to their ideology, when in fact it's a simple matter of evidence for claims made.

The story then appeared on the Daily Mail website, together with an invitation for reader comments. The article itself is reasonably (and unusually) dispassionate — but the comments, as might be expected, are something else.

Hayley Stevens is to be applauded for not only making the complaint in the first place, but also for standing up to be counted despite the unwelcome attention she must have known it would bring.

A short interview with Hayley Stevens, conducted after the recent Beyond the Veil one-day conference at Conway Hall at which she spoke (and before the ASA ruling discussed above), will be featured in the next episode of the Skepticule Extra podcast.

Respect other beliefs (but damn those believers to Hell)

2012-02-03T00:59:00.000Z

In chapter 39 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, co-editor Michael R. Licona asks, "Is Jesus the Only Way?" — and in the process gets a bit side-tracked, revealing some fundamental inconsistencies with god-belief in general and Christianity in particular.

He begins by quoting the Bible (of course):

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6)

...among other parts, then goes on to claim Jesus's exclusivity in the salvation department by means of his prediction that he would rise from the dead.

This is a pretty good test and differs from those offered by other religions.

It might be pretty good as far as Mike Licona is concerned, but isn't it, at heart, a non sequitur? Will you believe me if I tell you I can get you into Heaven? No? How about if I offer to perform a magic trick — will you believe me now? Resurrection and divinity are too tenuously related, in my opinion, for one to be a guarantee of the other.

Licona grants that literary comparisons of scriptures don't serve to place one above another, so he keeps coming back to the resurrection. This isn't surprising given he has co-written a book about it.

Space does not permit me to provide a historical case for Jesus’ resurrection. Gary Habermas and I have done so in The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. If we may assume for the moment that Jesus was truly who he claimed to be, this goes a long way toward reconciling his claim to being the exclusive route to God with the uneasiness it brings.

The "uneasiness" he refers to is the apparent arrogance of Jesus's exclusive claim. But saying "If we may assume for the moment that Jesus was truly who he claimed to be, this goes a long way toward reconciling his claim..." isn't saying much, other than "If we may assume Jesus is the only way to God, then Jesus is the only way to God." Jesus's claim is therefore not arrogant (with its concomitant "uneasiness"), but only if the claim is true — which Licona admits he's simply assuming.

Licona spends some time on the Heaven's Gate cult, extrapolating it to other non-Christian religions. (Personally I feel he could extend his scope to one more religion....)

If we can assess the truth-claims of the Heaven’s Gate religion, we can assess the truth-claims of other religions. Followers of other religions may find that their religious beliefs and practices bring them feelings of peace and hope and give them a purpose for living. In fact, here is a true statement: A number of valuable benefits have been realized by followers of non-Christian religions. However, if Jesus’ claim to be the exclusive way to God is true, then the following statement is false: Muhammad provided an effective way to be acceptable to God. In other words, a religion can be true in a subjective sense while being false in an objective one. I am interested in following religious teachings that are true in both senses.

He may say that, but I get the feeling from this chapter, and indeed the whole book, that everything he and his contributors write is geared not to truth but to confirmation.

Then comes a rather oblique section on the ethics of proselytism, attempting to justify exclusive claims with a so-called respect for other religions (and non-religion). Given the preponderance of special pleading, excuses and spurious rights to non-offence demanded by so many of the religious I find this section not just disingenuous but laughable. Licona then has the gall to come out with this:

Moreover, there are times when truth should not be sacrificed for the sake of avoiding offense. While the Titanic was sinking, since lifeboats were available, it would have been unethical for the crew, in the interest of reducing panic for the moment, to have told all of the passengers to go back to their cabins and sleep through the night because everything would be fine in the morning. Truth is important. Decisions of greater importance should drive us to discover the truth, rather than dilute or deny it in our efforts not to offend, which as we have seen is a no-win situation. However, when sharing our faith with others, Christians should remember to do it “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). We should love others and be graceful in our efforts to share the greatest news ever told.

And to tell them they're heading to Hell if they don't believe.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952887

Burnee links for Thursday

2012-01-26T13:30:00.000Z

(60% pure Pharyngula links this week...)

5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think | Cracked.com
Useful list with good advice, but does the "evolutionary argument for the origin of argumentation" have any factual basis?
(Via Rosemary Lyndall-Wemm.)

Primed by expectations – why a classic psychology experiment isn’t what it seemed | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine
Good illustration of why blinding in RCT's is essential.

The Bible is the Bad Book | Pharyngula
...or as PZ Myers puts it, "95% shit."

Alain de Botton is right about one thing | Pharyngula
PZ Myers is not enamoured of Atheism 2.0 (nor is Matt Dillahunty).

Irshad Manji discovers Muslim love | Pharyngula
"Next time you see an atheist accused of militancy or stridency, show the accuser this video. That’s what militant, strident fundamentalists look like."

Two events — one local, one not.

2012-01-25T23:25:00.000Z

Here are the next two events I'll be attending. First (tomorrow) we have the second anniversary of Winchester Skeptics in the Pub, with our honorary president doing the ... honours:

Then on Saturday (South West Trains' engineering works permitting) I'll be attending CFI's Blasphemy event at Conway Hall:

(And on Sunday evening we've scheduled the recording of Skepticule Extra's twentieth podcast episode — though given the current state of my voice, that might have to be postponed again.)

Burnee links for Thursday

2012-01-19T23:51:00.001Z

Atheism Takes Hit From SOPA Protests
This is H I L A R I O U S — I haven't laughed so much since five minutes ago.

‘How do atheists find meaning in life?’ - - The Washington Post
Paula Kirby explains how the religious abdicate from moral responsibility.

Intolerant Islam | Rhys's Blog
You have no right not to be offended. If you "take offence" at something, that's something you're doing. It's nobody else's responsibility.

Announcing... A Question of God | QED Blog | Question.Explore.Discover
This should be good, but to be really interesting it needs some provocative questions. Some on accommodationism could cause sparks to fly if Ophelia Benson is given free reign. Sexism in the so-called "atheist movement" is also likely to set some panellists in opposition. Paula Kirby will be moderating, but I hope she has an opportunity to present her own views. (Will there be blood on the ceiling at the end of this session?)

New Humanist (Rationalist Association) - Student-organised talk on Sharia law at the University of London cancelled following threats of violence
Disturbing. Despicable. And in this country.

Rhode Island florists refuse to deliver FFRF’s flowers to Jessica Ahlquist - Freedom From Religion Foundation - FFRF.org
Young secularists need all the support they can get.
(Via PZ Myers.)

Storm in a teacup at Unbelievable?

2012-01-15T23:23:00.000Z

I listened this evening to Justin Brierley's interview with Mark and Grace Driscoll (though Grace's participation was relatively minor). What have I, an atheist, to say about what is essentially a conversation between Christians about matters of tone and style? Isn't that kind of discussion irrelevant to me? Here's the streaming audio:

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={B568EE6E-C425-4285-BCE0-BE1CF6A6DF31}

In other circumstances I would have no interest in an interview of this type, concerned as it was with differing interpretations of Christian scripture and how they are to be applied to Christian ministry. But the audio of this interview was released on the Unbelievable? podcast feed, apparently as a response to some statements Mark Driscoll made on his blog regarding how the interview was conducted. Justin states in his introduction that the audio now aired is the full interview, and as someone who's been in the position of recording an interview (or at least a conversation) that has subsequently been the subject of comment by all participants, I have some sympathy with his apparent wish to put the record straight with the complete version of what transpired.

Having read Mark's blogpost I'm at a loss to understand his complaint. He's written (with his wife) a controversial book, and I would have thought he would want to promote it. Doing interviews for radio programmes and magazines is an obvious path to fulfilling this objective. Interviews about a controversial book will naturally focus on the most controversial parts of the book. Those parts are inspired by the authors' controversial views, so the interview will also deal with those views. But here's an excerpt from Mark's "A Blog Post for the Brits":

I have a degree in communications from one of the top programs in the United States. So does my wife, Grace. We are used to reporters with agendas and selective editing of long interviews. Running into reporters with agendas and being selectively edited so that you are presented as someone that is perhaps not entirely accurate is the risk one takes when trying to get their message out through the media.

With the release of our book, Real Marriage, we have now done literally dozens of interviews with Christians and non-Christians. But the one that culminated in the forthcoming article was, in my opinion, the most disrespectful, adversarial, and subjective. As a result, we’ve since changed how we receive, process, and moderate media interviews.

This does make me wonder what those "literally dozens of interviews" were like. Justin was entirely respectful of his interviewees while asking the questions his audience would want him to ask. I also wonder what good Mark's degree in communications did him when he seems so upset by Justin's quite reasonable questions and appropriately probing approach. For his part Justin did not flinch when Mark turned the tables at the end of the hour and probed him on his personal theology. Given the style of preaching Mark declares himself to use, his characterisation of Justin's interview as "the most disrespectful, adversarial, and subjective" beggars belief.

Justin's response on Christianity Magazine's website (his interview appears in the magazine) includes this:

My wife is a church minister so I asked the final question of the interview a bit tongue in cheek (for my own curiosity really). Pastor Mark then turned the tables and started asking me questions; we discussed whether my wife's church was the poorer having a woman up front. We disagreed on that! Then he asked me my view on Eternal Conscious Torment ‐ I admitted I side with John Stott ‐ an annihilationist. He asked me if I believe Penal Substitution ‐ I said it’s valid and one of a number of ways to view the cross, but can be expressed in an unhelpful way. He said I was wishy washy for qualifying things like that. That's just me, I'm not overly dogmatic on that issue.

Storm in a teacup? Probably, but it's a useful lesson for interviewers — including those doing interviews for podcasts — that one should distinguish facts from opinion, and be prepared to release one's original recordings.

Burnee links for Thursday

2012-01-12T23:43:00.000Z

Kristen Wolfe: Dear Customer Who Stuck Up For His Little Brother
I have a lump in my throat.
(Via Matt Dillahunty.)

Head of Faraday Institute avers his Christian belief « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne reviews an edition of Joan Bakewell's BBC Radio 3 programme, Belief (another of which I blogged about recently). He's ... not impressed.

Main opposition to reform on assisted dying will come from well-funded but unrepresentative religious lobby | HumanistLife
Sorely needed though this reform is, the current coalition government is archly conservative in outlook, and seems to me unlikely — despite the evidence in favour of this ethical progress — to embrace such reform.

The Blog : Everything and Nothing : Sam Harris
Sam Harris interviews Lawrence Krauss about his new book (which I now have on Kindle).

Beyond the Veil — this Saturday at Conway Hall

2012-01-11T20:37:00.000Z

Apparently there's still time to get tickets to this whole-day event, organised by Stephen Law (who was also responsible for the Conspiracy Theory Day last year, of which the videos of the various talks are now available.)

It's a good line-up — I'm looking forward to it.

"The Vampire of Kabul" by Daniel Abraham

2012-01-10T21:47:00.000Z

The full title of Daniel Abraham's short story is "Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul". It's the second in his Balfour and Meriwether steampunk duo series — the first of which I narrated for PodCastle about a year ago. I must have done it right, as they asked me to narrate the sequel, and here it is:

http://podcastle.org/2012/01/10/podcastle-191-balfour-and-meriwether-in-the-vampire-of-kabul/

Queen Victoria, the Czarina of the Russias, hallucinogenic drugs, the undead and a certain amount of highly refined violence — just the ticket for the new year.

You can listen at PodCastle, download the mp3, subscribe via iTunes or via another podcatcher. And it's free (though you might want to throw some cash their way if you like their stuff). You can also leave comments in the forum.

Enjoy.

The entire Christian faith is a gigantic lie

2012-01-08T23:42:00.000Z

"We will be examining the history and beliefs of the major religious movements of the world; but let me say at the outset, we will begin with the pre-supposition that everyone of them is a legitimate expression of the cultural, social, psychological, and existential experience of its adherents. Though they may differ in external and formal statements of doctrine and practice, they all express a similar essence of the awe and mystery in life and the universe. Furthermore, we will assume that each of the founders of the religions were all, in their various ways, expressing similar and universal moral and spiritual concepts. Thus, we will assume they are all equal in their authority and revelational validity."

This — shock horror — was what greeted a 19-year-old Southern Baptist when he enrolled in a comparative religion class at his university, as related by Tal Davis in "Is Jesus Superior to All Other Religious Leaders?" — Chapter 38 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. The student, however, was undeterred by this unexpected revelation and went on to convince himself (it took several months) that "all religions were not equal and that Jesus Christ was and is superior to the founders of the other major religions of the world. His conclusion was based on five lines of truth."

So let's go through these five lines of truth:

1. Jesus Christ is the only major world religion founder who had no beginning in time or space.

The evidence for this assertion consists of a slew of Bible quotes — so it boils down to Jesus had no beginning because it says so in the Bible. (Even if it were true, I fail to see the link between timelessness and superiority. It sounds like an extreme example of the argument from tradition.)

2. Jesus Christ is the only major world religion founder who came into the world as He did.

This is all about the virgin birth, which (as above) happened because it's reported in the Bible. Moreover, Davis claims this is unique to Jesus. Presumably Krishna, Buddha, Marduk and Huitzilopochtli don't count because their births were not exactly like that of Jesus (though each could be described as unique). Mithra beats them all of course, as he was born from a rock, which, you know, rocks. (Again we have an inexplicable link between superiority and being some kind of freak of nature.)

3. Jesus Christ is the only major world religion founder who lived a perfect and sinless life.

There's a bit of a problem here, deriving from the Euthyphro dilemma. It's very easy to claim that your deity is sinless if you define everything he does as good. If goodness is his very nature, it's impossible for him to have sinned, because sin is defined specifically to exclude anything he is reported to have done.

4. Jesus Christ is the only major world religion founder who died as a sacrificial atonement for the sins of humanity.

Lots of religious leaders die. If your religious leader dies a particularly humiliating death it can be somewhat deflating to the high hopes of the movement. Disappointed followers will desert in droves unless you can think of something to lift their spirits and convince them prospects aren't as bleak as they appear. Transforming an ignominious death into the potential saving of the whole of humanity is the kind of public relations coup that should — if you can pull it off — do the trick.

5. Jesus Christ is the only major world religion founder who rose from the dead to demonstrate His power and authority.

Given the success of number 4, this one should be a doddle.

The student in question apparently took several months to investigate all this, but I assume that's how long it took him to read the whole of the Bible (he had, I expect, other classes). But it comes down to one simple principle: Jesus is superior to all other religious leaders because it says so in the Bible.

Muslims, however, believe the Qur'an is superior to the Bible because the Qur'an came after the Bible. No doubt Jews believe the Old Testament is superior to the New Testament because the Old Testament came before the New Testament. These arguments are individually bullet-proof because they are completely self-contained — anything that contradicts them also confirms them, just as evidence against a conspiracy theory automatically (in the mind of a conspiracy theorist) confirms the conspiracy theory as true.

Christianity does not stand or fall on its moral principles or depth of mystical experience. If that were true, then it would be no better than any other religion in the world, and Jesus Christ would be only another great religious or moral teacher. No, Christianity stands or falls entirely on the person and work of one man: Jesus Christ. Either He was who He claimed to be, the Lord of the Universe, who came to earth as man, lived a sinless life, died on the cross as an atonement for our sins, and rose again from the dead, or the entire Christian faith is a gigantic lie.

Thanks for making it so clear.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952893

In search of the Absolute Shouldness Scale

2012-01-08T16:51:00.000Z

Now that the holiday's frenetic activity is over (giving way to the new year's frenetic activity), I've found time to catch up on some older blogposts marked for later reading. One such is from the excellent coelsblog by Coel Hellier, Professor of Astrophysics at Keele University. In "Science can answer morality questions" he gives a clear explanation of why any attempt to ground morality in some kind of transcendent power is doomed to failure.

Perhaps the biggest red-herring in mankind’s history has been the quest for the false grail of Absolute Ethics, the idea that there is an Absolute Shouldness Scale, and that if we could consult the scale we would know for sure whether we “should” do X or “should” do Y or “should not” do Z.

Well, there isn’t. At least, no-one has ever found one, nor has anyone produced a coherent account of how such a scale could have arisen or even what it would mean. While some might want to regard “shouldness” as one of the fundamental properties of the universe, along with gravitational mass or electric charge, they have produced no good reason for so thinking.

Naturally this won't sit well with those who believe morality is God-given, but the evidence for transcendent morality just isn't there.

Thus there is nothing Absolute about our moral senses, they are cobbled together to be effective enough for the job, in the same way that our livers, lungs, immune systems and visual systems have been cobbled together as effective enough to do their job. Further, we do not need an Absolute ethical system, any more than we need an Absolute immune system or an Absolute liver; a functional one is quite sufficient.

Morality, it seems — much to the annoyance of the religious — is actually about what works, and nothing to do with any gods.

The commonest attempt to establish an Absolute Shouldness Scale is to embody it in a god: “It is right because my god says so”. Since our moral senses are human moral senses, it makes sense to try to embody them in an Absolute version of a human, imagining God in man’s own image, as a idealised tribal patriarch. By doing so one can ignore the reality — that religions get their morality from people — and claim instead that people get their morality from religion.

Unfortunately, any attempt at establishing Divine Ethics suffers from fatal flaws, the most blatant being that there is no evidence for any such divine being. Equally problematic is that it doesn’t actually explain morality. Just saying “it’s a property of god” is not an explanation, it is accepting morality without explanation. By contrast, an emergence of morality in social animals, as evolutionary programming to facilitate cooperation, explains what morality is and where it comes from.

It's heartening to read honest attempts by concerned individuals to establish the nature and origins of morality, in contrast to the dismissive attitude of those religionists who just want to crib their morals from a dubious book. I consider coelsblog to be one of the best discoveries of 2011.

Burnee links for Sunday

2012-01-08T15:26:00.000Z

Andrew Brown is an idiot. It’s time for him to go « Choice in Dying
Eric MacDonald speaks as one who knows.
(Via Jerry Coyne.)

Penn Jillette: An Atheist's Guide to the 2012 Election (UPDATED WITH VIDEO) | Think Tank | Big Think
Penn Jillette has a problem.

Antonio Damasio: The quest to understand consciousness - Antonio Damasio - TED - RichardDawkins.net
Consciousness and self — emergent properties of the busy brain?

Delete anti-religious posts: Court to networking sites - Hindustan Times
This is simply not going to work, because the internet is a distributed system that interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.

Krauss finds something in nothing - Lawrence Krauss - asu news - RichardDawkins.net
Two videos of Lawrence Krauss, one a book promo, the other a lecture on extra dimensions (with accompanying slides).

The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films | Open Culture
A valuable archive.
(Via Jerry Coyne.)
See also Brian Cox's BBC radio documentary.

Theological mendacity, or biblical spin?

2012-01-07T22:55:00.000Z

I have elsewhere been accused of characterising theology as "piffle". But get this:

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most important beliefs of Christianity. It is central to the Christian understanding of God and is accepted by all Christian groups.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the belief that there is only one living and true God. Yet, the one God is three distinct Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These three have distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being. They enjoy eternal communion and are coeternal and coequal.

The doctrine of the Trinity denies tritheism. Tritheism is the belief that there are three gods. There is only one God. The doctrine of the Trinity also refutes modalism. Modalism is the belief that God is only one Person who appears in different modes at different times. The three Persons of the Trinity exist simultaneously. They are distinct and eternal Persons in the one God.

While the word "Trinity" is not found in the Bible, its truth is expressed in many biblical passages. The Bible recognizes the Father as God, the Son as God, and the Holy Spirit as God.

Piffle? Maybe, maybe not. It is, however, unadulterated poppycock. It's the opening four paragraphs of "The Trinity" by Bill Gordon — chapter 37 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God.

What follows these paragraphs is a bludgeoning array of Bible quotes that purport to show how the three-in-one isn't an utterly incoherent concept invented by theologians to explain away inconsistencies in Christian scripture. The last paragraph of the chapter reads:

The only conclusion is that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity accurately describes the biblical testimony about God. Finite humans cannot rationally explain the doctrine of the Trinity. This should not surprise us since there are many things the Bible teaches about God that we cannot fully understand. For example, the Bible affirms the existence of God, the creation of the universe, atonement from sin, and the resurrection of the dead although none of the truths can be totally understood by finite minds. As with the doctrine of the Trinity, Christians do not accept these teachings because they can rationally explain them, but because the Bible teaches them.

The mystery card — well played! Speaking as a finite human I might have reservations when physicists tell me that the photon is a wave as well as a particle, but I've noticed that physicists do experiments to test their hypotheses, and if they find out that they're incorrect, they come up with something better (and do some more experiments to confirm or deny the new hypothesis, and so the cycle repeats, giving us a progressively clearer picture of how things actually are). This chapter appears to be saying that the Trinity is the Trinity because it says so in the Bible and therefore there is no more to be said about it. This leads me to question — not for the first time — why Dembski and Licona put the sections of their book in the order they did. Since The Question of Jesus seems to rely so heavily on the Bible, why didn't they put it after the section entitled The Question of the Bible?

As it is, this chapter leaves me with the impression that there are three degrees (indeed, a trinity) of mendacity: lies, damned lies, and theology.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952871

Resurrecting yet another segment from that Facebook exchange

2012-01-06T23:41:00.001Z

This Facebook thread (from which I have already quoted) was started by Justin Brierley as yet more disingenuous Dawkins-baiting. I forebore to snap at said bait, and eventually the conversation drifted to other matters. But further down Justin seemed motivated enough to whip it back in line with this bit of peevishness:

Unbelievable? I don't normally get that easily offended by silly things that Dawkins says, but that quotation from the piece struck me as so incredibly condescending and insulting.

Are those who are tortured and killed for their faith around the world "mewling and wimpering at the fear of death"? Are those whose faith have helped them to face incredible, harship, illness and death, "mewling and whimpering to an imaginery deity in their fear of death"?

Its a slap in the face to the sick Pirsoners of War that my grandfather tended to and gave their last rites in a Japanese camp in the 1930s, its a slap in the face to the people my wife visits today on hospital wards in their last hours to pray with and offer words of hope and love and peace.

If you think its an imagined source of stength and courage in the face of death, then you are welcome to that view, but please don't go around with the (there's not other word for it I'm afraid) offensive rubbish Dawkins passed off in this supposed eulogy.

If theists find certain characterisations of their worship of a god offensive, that's too bad. Some atheists find it offensive to be told they have no grounding for morality, and that therefore any moral judgments they make are completely without foundation — when in fact many of them have given moral questions a great deal of thought and come to their views and decisions based on consideration of a wide range of circumstances and consequences.

No-one, however, theist or atheist, has a right not to be offended. As for "mewling and whimpering" — read the Book of Common Prayer to see why such a characterisation is, in some atheist eyes, entirely justified. These were taken more or less at random from the Collects:

"we are sorely hindered by our sins"

"Grant that we, being regenerate and made thy children by adoption and grace..."

"Have compassion, we beseech thee, upon our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask..."

And particularly relevant to Justin's complaint — from Ministration at the Time of Death:

"We sinners beseech you to hear us, Lord Christ: That it may
please you to deliver the soul of your servant from the power
of evil, and from eternal death"

Into your hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend your
servant N. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of
your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your
own redeeming."

But for a wholehearted mewl and a thoroughly downcast whimper I found Confession of Sin:

Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
we have offended against thy holy laws,
we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent,
according to thy promises declared unto mankind
in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

It's not as if I had to ferret these quotes out; I simply opened up the book and there they were. Anglicans of Dawkins' generation grew up with this stuff, so it's hardly surprising that "mewling and whimpering" is seen by many as part and parcel of Christianity.

Christians, and other theists, will just have to get used to it. The ring-fence has gone, the free pass has expired, and religion must take its place alongside art, literature, music and food as a fit subject for robust criticism — and sometimes warranted ridicule.

My grandfather would never have been caught "mewling and whimpering". He objected to being cast as a "miserable sinner" — he was willing to accept he was a sinner, but he refused to be miserable.

Circular hallucinations are circular

2012-01-05T23:36:00.004Z

"Were the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus Hallucinations?"

This is the question Michael R. Licona asks in the title of Chapter 36 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. In the second paragraph Licona quotes the apostle Paul: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless." And therein lies a problem.

Christianity places so much stock in the resurrection, Christians arguing for the truth of Christianity seem to go a bit crazy about it, clutching at the flimsiest straws to show that Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore Christianity is true. So it is with this chapter — Licona tries to show that the disciples could not all have been suffering from a common hallucination, because, he says, hallucinations don't work like that: just as people don't share the same dreams, they don't hallucinate the same events. But this isn't necessarily the case — there's such a thing as mass hysteria, for example.

Licona attempts a statistical approach:

About 15 percent of the population experience one or more hallucinations during their lifetime. Research has shown that some personality types are more prone to experiencing them. Women are more likely to experience them than men. And the older we get, the more likely we are to experience a hallucination. So, it should come as no surprise to discover that senior adults who are in the midst of bereaving the loss of a loved one belong to a group that experiences one of the highest percentage of hallucinations; a whopping 50 percent! (See Aleman and Larøi, Hallucinations: The Science of Idiosyncratic Perception, American Psychological Association, 2008.)

With these things in mind, let’s consider the possibility that Jesus’ disciples, the Church persecutor Paul, and Jesus’ skeptical half-brother James experienced hallucinations of the risen Jesus. All of the twelve disciples, Paul, and James were men, who were probably of different age groups and probably of different personalities. That the Twelve were grieving is certain. Yet proposals that the disciples were hallucinating must argue that more than 15 percent of them had the experience. In fact, more than the whopping 50 percent we find among bereaving senior adults would have experienced them. Indeed, it would have been a mind-blowing 100 percent! Moreover, it must likewise be proposed that when these hallucinations occurred, they just happened to do so simultaneously. And it just so happened that they must have experienced their hallucinations in the same mode for them to believe that they had seen the same Jesus. In other words, if a group hallucination had actually occurred, it would have been more likely that the disciples would have experienced their hallucinations in different modes and of at least slightly differing content. Perhaps one would have said, “I see Jesus over by the door,” while another said, “No. I see him floating by the ceiling,” while still another said, “No. I only hear him speaking to me,” while still another said, “I only sense that he’s in the room with us.” Instead, what we have are the reports that the disciples saw Jesus.

Licona appears to be claiming that because all of the Twelve saw Jesus risen, then it must be statistically true. But we don't have twelve gospels, so we don't have twelve independently attested eyewitness accounts. We don't know what the disciples saw, we only have relatively few second-hand reports of what they allegedly saw. The gospel accounts were written some decades after the events recorded, and those involved may well have built up a favourable picture in their minds — a picture that tended to converge on common aspects of what they all remember, despite possibly comprising wildly divergent elements. It's not something we can know with any degree of certainty, even if believers want it so very much to be true. Given the fantastical nature of the claims, the lack of correspondingly strong evidence leaves the balance of probabilities firmly on the side of skepticism.

Finally, as if his readers have already forgotten his own Chapter 33 in this book, Licona tries once more to use circular reasoning to prove his case:

There is at least one more difficult problem for those claiming that the appearances of Jesus were only hallucinations: Jesus’ tomb was empty. If Jesus had not, in fact, been raised from the dead and the appearances were hallucinations, once must still account for how Jesus’ tomb had become empty. Aside from the fact that hallucinations are horribly inadequate at explaining the appearances as we observed above, even if that were not the case they cannot account for Jesus’ empty tomb.

It's legitimate to claim that hallucinations cannot account for the empty tomb, as long as you don't try to use the empty tomb to account for the resurrection — as Licona has already implicitly done by co-editing a whole chapter devoted to just that.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952863

Burnee links for Thursday

2012-01-05T20:15:00.000Z

Things atheists need to stop saying? MAKE me. | The Atheist Experience
Russell Glasser refuses. (And says why.)

National Secular Society - Lawyer recommends a single, secular oath to be sworn in court
This is a good proposal - can we have it in England please?

Can it be rational for the religious to be non-rational? | Julian Baggini | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Julian Baggini on Plantinga and (although not by name) presuppositionalism.

Paul Wallace: Intelligent Design Is Dead: A Christian Perspective
Say no to a "tinkerer-God".

‘The single most threatening development on faith schools in a decade’: Government backs Church plans to take over many more state schools
Astonishing that the Government appears to be going ahead regardless.

Richard Wilson - Burden of proof: should evidence determine policy? | New Humanist
Evidence-based policy or policy-based evidence?

More Christian double-speak

2012-01-04T23:52:00.002Z

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? featured another itch-inducing segment from William Lane Craig. I've not yet heard his Cambridge lecture (not even sure I want to), but Justin Brierley broadcast a section of the Q&A, revealing the egregious double standards of religious language that I touched on in a previous post.

In response to a question about whether God needs to be caused (at 45'15"):

...God is omnipotent, omniscient, exists self-existently, is eternal, is morally perfect, and so forth. There are many many attributes that will round out and give you a very theologically rich concept of God, but it's important to see that in Christian thinking, traditionally God isn't a contingent being — that is to say a being that just happens to exist. God doesn't just happen to exist. He's metaphysically necessary — he's a self-existent being. His non-existence is impossible.

In response to the problem of evil and suffering in the world (at 47'02"):

The atheist has to show that it's either impossible or highly improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world, and we're simply not in a position to make those kind of judgements with any sort of confidence. God's morally sufficient reasons for permitting some incident of suffering in your life might not emerge until centuries later, maybe in another country, so that you would have no hope of being able to see what his morally sufficient reason is for permitting this [inaudible] your life. So it's simply impossible for us to make with any kind of confidence these sort of probability judgements when some incident of suffering occurs, that God probably lacks a morally sufficient reason for allowing that. That's sheer speculation.

Craig dismisses the problem of evil on the basis of the impossibility of knowing things about God (describing this as sheer speculation), only seconds after he has claimed all kinds of things about God that he cannot possibly know.

Woo or no? Rupert Sheldrake on BBC Radio 3

2012-01-04T20:44:00.000Z

Monday evening — it could have been any po-faced radio documentary on theology or abstruse literary criticism, but it was framed by Joan Bakewell's guest as "science". Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

Tonight on Belief Joan Bakewell talks to Professor Rupert Sheldrake. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and a former Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He's worked at Clare College Cambridge and at the International Crops Research Institute in Hyderabad. During his seven years in India Professor Sheldrake studied the Upanishads, yoga and meditation but then went to live in a Christian ashram. He tells Joan about his journey through Methodism, atheism and Hinduism to the Anglican Church and explains why he finds more blind faith and dogma in the scientific world than among any religious community.

Unfortunately on Rupert Sheldrake's part it was all unsubstantiated assertion. He mentioned the dozens of scientific papers he's published, though didn't identify any in particular. He claimed telepathy is real, and (I think) that he has proved that some dogs can tell when their owners are about to return home. He made out these things were indisputably true, and that he has a theory that explains them. Joan Bakewell was commendably skeptical, and asked him about "morphic resonance" and how it actually works, but he didn't elaborate, other than that telepathy works through "morphic fields".

The half-hour radio programme is available to listen again (in HD sound, no less):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b018nsjk

Rupert Sheldrake has a new book to promote (which to some extent explains why he's on the radio):

Original title, don't you think? And by the way, the Sun is a concious entity.

Late, later, latest episode of Skepticule Extra at last available

2012-01-03T23:25:00.000Z

I've been busy. Plus, this episode of Skepticule Extra is the first I've done using the "triple ender" technique, designed to overcome problems with the variable quality of Skype by using three separately recorded voice tracks. I think it turned out OK, and if the individual recordings are up to scratch this should be the preferred way of producing a Skype podcast. Having done it once I've discovered there isn't that much extra work involved (although working out how to do it in GarageBand took a while).

SkepExtra-019-20111211

In this episode the three Pauls discuss clerical gay-bashing, Kraussian cosmology, undesirable abortion, televisual archaeology and complementary medical soft-pedalling.

Burnee links for New Year's Day

2012-01-01T11:57:00.000Z

No power in the ‘verse can stop us | Pharyngula

"Religion is not some mild happy recreational activity; it is a poison of the brain that taints the vast majority of humanity. It is bad shit."

PZ's call to arms.

The Pope asks Catholics to be stupid « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne on the Pope's Christmas message (which is a good example of a type of religious language obviously intended to obscure rather than enlighten).

Has religion made the world less safe? - Guest Voices - The Washington Post
I have Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It's a large tome, and will likely take me a fair while to read. But Jerry Coyne has been extolling its virtues, not the least of which is that it's well written — a major criterion for me, given my lack of precious reading time.

Jeff Schweitzer: Secular Guidelines to Moral Living: A Tribute to Christopher Hitchens
Regardless of this article's being pegged as a Hitchens tribute it makes a fitting reflection on goals and resolutions at the turn of the year.

Afterword from Lawrence Krauss' New Book - A Universe From Nothing - Richard Dawkins - RDFRS - RichardDawkins.net
A new book from Lawrence Krauss, based on (or at least springing from) his AAI 2009 lecture, will certainly be worth reading. I've recommended the lecture many times; here it is again:

http://youtu.be/7ImvlS8PLIo

Resurrection of the gaps

2011-12-30T16:11:00.000Z

In "The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus" — Chapter 35 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God — Gary R. Habermas announces he "will list ten considerations that favor Jesus's resurrection appearances." Most of this appears to be "eyewitness testimony", but four of these ten considerations are accounts given by Paul in the New Testament. This is eyewitness testimony recorded by one man — a convert whose conversion was so cataclysmic that its location gave its name to such conversions: Damascene. It's well known that converts are often the most devout, the most zealous — consequently their pronouncements are to be regarded with a degree of caution.

"That Jesus' resurrection was the very center of early Christian faith..." doesn't necessarily count towards its status as fact. If a religious sect is being started it needs something to make it special, and a resurrection will fit the bill. The emphasis on the resurrection could have been something early Christian leaders promulgated in order to gain followers, regardless of its truth value. (I'm not saying here that those leaders were deliberately fraudulent, but they would have been aware of which aspects of their faith would be most persuasive to potential converts.)

Habermas uses (and excuses) multiple appeals to authority:

Throughout this essay, I will not assume the inspiration or even the reliability of the New Testament writings, though I think these doctrines rest on strong grounds. I will refer almost exclusively to those data that are so well attested that they impress even the vast majority of non-evangelical scholars. Each point is confirmed by impressive data, even though I can do no more than offer an outline of these reasons.

If he's not assuming the reliability of the New Testament writings, how can he use them to support his case?

We must be clear from the outset that not only do contemporary scholars not mind when points are taken from the New Testament writings, but they do so often. The reason is that confirmed data can be used anywhere it is found.

But of course he's not going to use any data that supports a contrary case, only implicitly asserting that it inhabits tiny spaces left over when he says "...the vast majority of non-evangelical scholars", or "...comparatively few skeptical scholars...", or "Few conclusions in current study are more widely held by scholars...", or "Most scholars who address the subject think that...", or "...scholars usually agree that...", or "Virtually no one, friend or foe, believer or critic, denies that...", or "It is almost always acknowledged that...", or "...the vast majority of contemporary scholars conclude that..."

Habermas's case appears to be a "resurrection of the gaps" argument. He claims there's no natural explanation for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and that therefore Jesus rose from the dead. First, this is an argument from ignorance, and second, the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim. The evidence from scripture is shaky at best: note that there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus actually rising from the dead — it's all post hoc supposition, with Habermas and other apologists filling in the gaps themselves with events they want to believe happened.

It's not up to anyone else to disprove the resurrection, because it hasn't been sufficiently established to begin with. I can't account for what goes on in the mind of a religious zealot, but I am highly suspicious of any extraordinary event reported by eyewitnesses. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, and if those accounts are mostly reported second-hand by one individual with his own agenda we have good reason to be skeptical. I may not personally have a definitive explanation for the scriptural accounts, but I don't need one. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing to disprove.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952867

A Facebook exchange on hellish religious language

2011-12-29T19:54:00.000Z

Here's a Facebook conversation from a few days before Christmas. The thread (of which this is a part) is now buried deep down in the Unbelievable group and therefore probably not worth reviving, but I wanted to record my final comments for the sake of completeness, and to clarify my own thoughts:

Daniel Smith Sam, some Christians argue that language of hell and eternal torment is figurative for cessation of existence; it does not refer to literal conscious torment for eternity. This view is called annihilationism.

Other Christians, like myself, take the imagery of hell (fire and brimstone, etc....) to be symbolic. After all, it is difficult to see how there could be "outer darkness" in a literal furnace, so one of these texts at least must be understood non-literally. if humans were made for relationship with God, then to be separated from God for eternity would be a type of torment, albeit self-inflicted.

And as you guessed others, perhaps most, think that a literal furnace exists where the damned suffer eternally.

Point being, there is a range of views, and the issue is not at all settled, especially between the second and third conceptions of hell.
19 December at 05:07 · Like

Paul Jenkins ‎@Daniel, this is why I find religious language unhelpful. If someone threatens to beat me to a pulp, and I interpret that "figuratively" as nothing more than a threat to scowl disapprovingly at me, at the very least this indicates a failure of communication.
19 December at 09:42 · Like

Daniel Smith Paul,

I think your language is just as unhelpful. Figurative language is not "religious language." It's jut the way humans communicate. I don't say that I find scientific language unhelpful because "the sun rose at 6:53 A.M." is not literally true. Or at the end of a long day of work, "I am dead tired" is not literally true. Or "sometimes my wife has to whip me into shape," is (usually) not literally true. The fact that religious texts use language which all of us use every day is neither a defect in religion nor in religious language.

If someone threatens to beat you to a pulp, you take them literally in that you think they literally will beat you, but not literally "to a pulp." So even this implies a bit of figurative speech which needs to be interpreted. Easy to point the finger at religion, though. Maybe you should acknowledge that things just aren't always as clear as you want them to be.
19 December at 19:24 · Like

Paul Jenkins Daniel,

I acknowledge that things aren't always as clear as I'd like, and that there is a difference between being "beaten to a pulp" in the figurative sense and being beaten to a pulp in an electric blender. Both the figurative sense and the literal sense, however, would involve blood and mangled flesh rather than, say, superficial bruising. Therefore I maintain that my figurative use of "beaten to a pulp" is a legitimate use of language that conveys my intended meaning with a degree of accuracy.

This cannot be said of the difference between "literal conscious torment" in the "fire and brimstone" of a literal furnace on the one hand, and "cessation of existence" on the other. The two are not remotely comparable. The claim that one is a symbolic expression of the other contributes more to obfuscation than clarity.
20 December at 00:31 · Like

Daniel Smith Therefore you maintain that your use of language, while not literally correct, is correct enough in the context you're using it and for the audience you're communicating with.

I agree with you that annihilationism does not seem to be what passages about fire and brimstone teach. That view is based on other passages. Nevertheless you've conceded the most important thing: that figurative language is constantly is use. This makes it difficult to criticize the Bible on the basis that there are debates about what some passages contained therein really mean to say. I mean, we have the same debates in America about the constitution. This must prove that political language is totally worthless and imprecise, right?
20 December at 22:21 · Like

I do concede that figurative language is in constant use — it's part of what makes conversation interesting and expressive, and it certainly doesn't make political language worthless (although it can adversely affect its precision). But if "fire and brimstone" is figurative or symbolic language, and annihilationism is "based on other passages", at least one of these must be wrong, and in either case the language used to justify them is, indeed, unhelpful.

Absence of corpse isn't evidence of resurrection

2011-12-28T23:36:00.000Z

I'm unsure why the "empty tomb" is supposed to be a big deal. If an inanimate object is placed at a particular location, and is subsequently not found where it was placed, one does not normally jump to the conclusion that the object moved of its own accord. Being inanimate, incapable of independent locomotion, the object — or rather its lack — is most likely to be explained by having been moved by a person or persons unknown. If the location in question is a tomb, and the object a corpse, the most plausible explanation for the corpse's absence is that it's been stolen.

Be that as it may, Gary R. Habermas expends some additional words in "The Empty Tomb of Jesus", Chapter 34 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, on the "criterion of embarrassment" — that reports of the empty tomb came from women, whose testimony was at the time held to be generally less reliable than that of men. The problem with the criterion of embarrassment is that it cuts both ways, and is therefore worth very little: we can just as easily say, "it must be true because it's so incredible" as we can say, "it must be true because it's so credible." (Would the gospel accounts of the empty tomb be any more believable if they contained the reports of known liars, or children, or perhaps even talking donkeys? I think not.)

Unfortunately Habermas goes one worse, and like Michael Licona in the previous chapter engages in circular reasoning:

Fourth, most recent scholars seem to agree that, while Paul does not explicitly mention the empty tomb, the early tradition that this apostle reported to others in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 implies an empty tomb. The listing of the Gospel content moves from Jesus' death, to his burial, to his resurrection from the dead, to his appearances. This sequence strongly suggests that, however it may have been transformed, Jesus' body that died and was buried is the same one that was raised afterwards. Thus, what was placed in the ground is precisely what emerged. In short, what went down is what came up. Such a process would have resulted in the burial tomb being emptied.

That Paul does not specifically mention the empty tomb keeps this from being as strong a point as it could have been. Still, to say so clearly that Jesus' dead body was buried, raised, and appeared would be a rather strange process unless the tomb had been vacated in the process.

Habermas is implicitly using the empty tomb as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus (that's presumably why this chapter is included), but the paragraphs quoted above appear to use accounts of Jesus's post-mortem appearances as evidence for the tomb being empty. Do I need to point out again that this is a circular argument?

Then Habermas uses the well-worn trope of "would they die for a lie?" without examining the possibility that disciples might very well die for a delusion if they were sufficiently indoctrinated. The fact that the disciples were prepared to die for their beliefs has no bearing on whether those beliefs were true.

It does seem likely that the tomb was empty, but this only shows that the tomb did not contain a body. I find this unremarkable, and I'm at a loss to understand why Habermas is even concerned to establish it. Too bad I didn't get that chance to ask him myself.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952861

Brainy stuff

2011-12-28T11:41:00.000Z

Pinkish grey and vaguely reminiscent of an oversized walnut, the human brain is composed of brainy stuff, which allows it, by means that are far from fully understood, to do brainy stuff. Currently screening on BBC Four TV this week (and available on iPlayer) this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are delivered by Professor Bruce Hood, who is inviting us to "Meet Your Brain".

Here's a trailer, from the RI Channel website:
http://www.richannel.org/christmas-lectures/2011/meet-your-brain#/the-christmas-lectures-2011--trailer

The Christmas Lectures 2011 - Trailer from The Royal Institution on Vimeo.

There are lots more videos relating to the Christmas Lectures on the RI Channel, including some snippets recorded well before the lectures themselves. Worth a browse.

As an unexpected bonus, Professor Hood's new book The Self Illusion — not due to be published until April 2012 — is partly available as a free Kindle download from Amazon (remember you don't need a Kindle to be able to read Kindle ebooks — there are free software readers for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android).

The last time brainy stuff was the subject of the Christmas Lectures they were delivered, if I remember correctly, by Susan Greenfield. Presumably she went on to carry out rigorous, detailed research — fully documented in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals — into the effects on the brain of activities such as video-gaming and internet social networking. Or something like that.

Burnee links for the Tuesday after Christmas, containing much stuff I should have posted quite a long time ago...

2011-12-27T18:15:00.000Z

Science, Reason and Critical Thinking: Skeptic Trumps: Rhys Morgan
The Welsh boyo has arrived.

New Humanist (Rationalist Association) - Half of Britons now non-religious, finds respected British Social Attitudes survey
Progress in Great Britain at least.

Dr. Coyne gets religious pushback « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne gets first hand experience of anti-evolutionism at the chalkface.

Horrifyingly delusional anti-vaxxers in Australia | Pharyngula
Meryl Dorey is dangerously deluded.

A common atheist delusion | Pharyngula
Social glue, or a disastrously stupid collection of bad ideas?

Hitch is not in heaven | Pharyngula
We are all "living dyingly".

Spilled Ink
As comprehensive takedowns go, this is as comprehensive as it gets.

The Blog : Hitch : Sam Harris
A favourite writer on a favourite writer.

A Modest Proposal « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry
Maybe the time is right for repatriation of some items whose expatriation was made possible by the civilisation from which they were expatriated in the first place.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day 2011 | Sarah Angliss
I'm linking to this (belatedly because I've only just found it) not because it's Ada Lovelace but because it's Daphne Oram, whose "Oramics" electronic music machine I saw when I visted the Science Museum on the day I attended the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall this year.

The dangers of video games | Pharyngula
Let that be a lesson to you...

The scandalous video that could not be shown on TV! Here! Now! Uncensored! | Pharyngula
Another from YouTube linked by PZ Myers.

Next year, we must wage the War on Christmas harder | Pharyngula
PZ Myers disagrees with John Lennox and Alister McGrath. This is not a surprise — these two epitomise some extremes of theology: confident but utterly unsubstantiated pronouncements from the former and waffly vacuity from the latter. (Once upon a time I thought it might be helpful to read a primer on theology, but changed my mind when I discovered most of them were written my Alister McGrath.)

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 — 2011

2011-12-16T23:20:00.000Z

http://youtu.be/mQorzOS-F6w

"The metaphysical claims of religion are untrue."

It's been a sad and sobering day. We shall not see his like again.

Circular logic is circular in Evidence for God

2011-12-05T21:11:00.001Z

Michael R. Licona, one of the editors of Evidence for God (the other being William A. Dembski) contributes Chapter 33, "Can We Be Certain That Jesus Died on a Cross? — A Look at the Ancient Practice of Crucifixion". Certainty in this matter is apparently important because if Jesus didn't die on a cross he couldn't have been resurrected, and "without a resurrection, Christianity is falsified." So Licona presents "four reasons that support the credibility of the claim that Jesus died as a result of being crucified."

First, he mentions reports about Jesus's execution, some by non-Christians, and he goes on to say:

The fact that these non-Christians mentioned Jesus in their writings shows that Jesus' death was known outside of Christian circles and was not something the Christians invented.

That's stretching it a bit. Licona himself states that the reports were late first century, early second century, early to mid-second century, and second to third century. Even the earliest would presumably have been decades after the event reported, so it's unlikely they were reliable eye-witness accounts. They could even have been second-hand reports based on the same source — but how reliable was that source itself? Maybe the story of Jesus's death was known outside of Christian circles, but the existence of those reports is hardly proof that they are all true.

Second, Licona goes into gory detail about crucifixion and concludes that people who were crucified were highly unlikely to survive it. I'm not sure why this needs to be stated — execution isn't something one is expected to survive.

Then we get this:

Third, professional medical opinions are unanimous in concluding that Jesus certainly died as a result of being crucified.⁷

Licona gives the following reference for the above statement:

⁷A number of these are mentioned in Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Volume 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1088ff.

Now, I'm not disputing that Jesus probably died as a result of his crucifixion, but I have to point out Licona's appallingly shoddy logic in the above claim. What, precisely, does he mean by "unanimous"? Has he consulted every professional medical opinion? Apparently not — he says "a number" are mentioned in his cited reference. It seems therefore that he's using "unanimous" in the sense that all of the professional medical opinions that conclude Jesus died from crucifixion are unanimous in that opinion — which is at best tautologous.

Licona may have been perilously close to the edge of logic with that last "reason", but with his fourth he steps right off the cliff. He attempts to use Jesus's post-mortem appearances as evidence for him dying on the cross. This is begging the question. What Licona is trying to establish in this chapter is that Jesus died on the cross, because if Jesus didn't die on the cross he couldn't have been resurrected. Licona can't use the resurrection as proof of the crucifixion and then use the crucifixion to prove the resurrection, because — this is elementary stuff — that's a circular argument.

Argumentation of such low calibre is fatal to Licona's credibility here. Dembski should have spiked it.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952883

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-12-04T20:20:00.001Z

Sophisticated theologians circumvent Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality « Why Evolution Is True:
Jerry Coyne: "I’m starting to realize that there is no sophisticated theology." He's referring to a post by Jason Rosenhouse, who concludes with this on Leviticus:

"If you want to use the Bible as a moral guide then you are stuck with it. The text is not infinitely malleable, and you cannot reasonably interpret X to mean not X. Rather than try to twist the text to fit modern moral sensibilities, which despite their denials is precisely what Friedman and Dolansky are doing, why don't we simply discard this particular ancient book and move on to more promising approaches to morality?"

Amen!

Islam, Charles Darwin and the denial of science - Telegraph
Steve Jones on the point of despair as students reject evolution.
(Via David Jenkins*.)

Rationally Speaking: A handy dandy guide for the skeptic of determinism
A decidedly triumphal post from Massimo Pigliucci on the pervasive idea that determinism has been determined. (I need more understanding of philosophy...)

More on free will: Dr.^3 Pigliucci weighs in, I respond « Why Evolution Is True
Maybe I really should learn more philosophy if I want to get to grips with jousts like those Jerry Coyne and Massimo Pigliucci engage in.

Best photos of the year 2011 | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters
100 pictures — the best of photojournalism (some very graphic).
(Via Luke Muehlhauser.)

* Yeah, he's my dad.

It's that man again — the Craig "itch"

2011-12-04T19:01:00.001Z

Regular readers of this blog (and listeners to Skepticule Extra) will know that I have an oscillating attitude to William Lane Craig. No sooner have I concluded that he has nothing new to tell me and therefore I can forthwith ignore him, than I find myself irresistibly scratching at something he's said, knowing that it's wrong without being able to put my finger on precisely why. But I think Thunderf00t has nailed it:

http://youtu.be/4u6Mz21jTaA

Being a confident speaker will go a long, long way towards convincing people that what you say is true. If you behave in a way that says loudly and clearly that of course what you say is true, many people will believe you by default. But with Craig there is always that niggling doubt that his approach to his various arguments for the existence of God rests on something not just unsound but profoundly silly. This video exposes that doubt and parades it for all to see.

4thought.tv: "Should creationism be taught in schools?"

2011-12-04T14:35:00.001Z

Back in June Channel 4's daily two-minute opinion film-clip slot, 4thought.tv, covered intelligent design. I blogged about it at the time, and we covered it on the Skepticule Extra podcast. A couple of weeks ago the subject was "Should creationism be taught in schools?"

Monday's clip was 18-year-old student Sam Scott Perry:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/sam-scott-perry

Young Earth Creationist Sam Scott Perry believes the world is only between 6,000 to 10,000 years old and that dinosaurs roamed the land with humans. Sam thinks creationism should be included in schools in order to allow children to make up their own mind.

He believes that humans were formed from dust by God because that's what the Bible says, and wants creationism to be taught in schools in the interests of "fair and objective science." From these and other comments it's clear he has no notion of what science is — he admits that he gained his A* in GCSE Biology by writing the answers required even though he doesn't believe they are true. He believes humans walked with dinosaurs because dinosaurs are land animals and the Bible says that land animals and humans were created on the sixth day. This, according to Sam Scott Perry, is "logical". He also floats a weird conspiracy theory that creationism is not currently taught in schools because of fears it might convince people the Bible is true. Are his views typical of 18-year-old creationists? Perhaps not, but Channel 4 naturally go for the extreme case with which to start off this series.

Conspiracy theories are picked up by Tuesday's contributor, Stephen Law:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/stephen-law

Stephen Law is a Lecturer in Philosophy who believes creationism is scientific nonsense. Stephen says it is wrong to teach children something he thinks is quite clearly false.

"Creationism is pernicious scientific nonsense." Stephen Law states simply that teaching creationism as fact is teaching things known not to be true, and goes on to suggest that clinging to the Biblical story of creation in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary could be interpreted as symptomatic of mental illness. (He has pointed out elsewhere that he didn't intend to imply that all creationists were mentally ill.)

Randall Hardy of "Creation Research" is another creationist who thinks that children should be allowed to make up their own minds:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/randall-hardy

Creationist Randall Hardy wants children to be taught that God made the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Randall thinks evolutionists and atheists fear Creationism being taught in schools because children will find it convincing.

Creationists often play the "academic freedom" card, but in schools it's not appropriate to teach something that isn't accepted science. Otherwise the science curriculum would be full of phlogiston theory, the luminiferous aether, the four humours and all sorts of other unscientific stuff like alchemy and astrology. Students are free to investigate pseudo-science after school — they can even go on to study it at university. Randall Hardy displays appalling ignorance of evolution when he talks of cats bringing forth cats, dogs bringing forth dogs. He's also wrong when he claims people when they are born believe naturally in a creator. Leaving aside the fact that the existence of a belief has no bearing on whether that belief is true, what children are born with is an innate tendency to ascribe agency (to inanimate objects as well as people and animals). This is an evolved instinct — it supports evolution rather than creation.

Next we have Rev Canon Rosie Harper, who says that creationism is based on a literal reading of the Bible, and is an unnecessarily narrow viewpoint:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/rev-canon-rosie-harper

Reverend Canon Rosie Harper believes teaching creationism to children is selling them short. Rosie thinks literal interpretations of the Bible are dangerously wrong-headed and risk bringing mainstream Christianity into disrepute.

She doesn't want creationism taught in schools, but she's one of those wishy-washy Anglicans about whom one might say, "there but for the grace of God goes an atheist." In this debate however, she's on the right side.

Laura Horner is the founder of CrISIS — Creationism In Schools Isn't Science:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/laura-horner

Laura Horner is an Anglican and the founder of CrISIS; Creationism in Schools Isn’t Science. Laura started the group after a creationist movement visited her son’s school. Laura believes creationism discredits religion as much as it discredits science.

She's a Christian who believes creationism is bad religion as well as bad science, and makes the important point about valid science being falsifiable, while creationism isn't.

Saturday's clip was by Abdul Aziz, a maths teacher:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/abdul-aziz

Muslim Abdul Aziz is a Maths Teacher who believes evolution is not convincing as a scientific theory. Abdul wants creationism presented alongside evolution in the classroom, so that children get the opportunity to make up their own minds.

He claims that belief in evolution is based on a "leap of faith" and comes out with the usual creationist micro/macro-evolution objection. His whole argument is one from ignorance — it appears he's never read a book about evolution (I'd suggest The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins). He also says (like Randall Hardy) that children should be allowed to make up their own minds, which from a teacher is a shocking misunderstanding of what education is about.

Finally we have Michael Reiss, who does not want to see creationism taught in schools, but he's not averse to it being discussed (though thankfully not as a science in science lessons):

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-creationism-be-taught-in-schools/michael-reiss

A Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, Michael Reiss welcomes open discussion of creationism in the classroom provided it is made clear that it has no scientific basis whatsoever.

He complains that some materialist scientists can't understand what it's like to have a religious faith. What he's implying, I think, is that a hard-line atheistic attitude is alienating children with creationist beliefs, to the extent that they will not be open to the scientific evidence. Michael Reiss made similar comments when he was the Royal Society's Director of Education, which caused a bit of an uproar, and shortly afterwards he stepped down from his post. Although the 4thought.tv website makes no mention of it (except, someone has noted it in the comments), Michael Reiss is a minister of religion.

Creationism does seem to bring the wackos out of the woodwork, as the comments on these clips show. I posted a brief comment on the first clip, and found myself in a protracted exchange with a user named Phillip, who — though extremely polite — seemed to have no conception of how to distinguish what's true from what's false.

Skepticule Extra 017 now available

2011-12-03T16:23:00.001Z

Somewhat delayed, the 17th edition of Skepticule Extra is now available for listening. Go here for this delectable download:

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/12/skepextra-017-20111113.html

The three Pauls deal actively with some feedback, then discuss some planned disruptive action to Remembrance Sunday, some libel action, some political action, and some concentrated apologetics action. It's an all-action episode...

An explanation that's nothing of the kind

2011-12-03T12:49:00.001Z

Last week's Unbelievable? featured Edgar Andrews and Robert Stovold on "What made the Universe?" — a loaded question if ever there was one (though to be fair, host Justin Brierley admitted this). There was much about fine tuning and the Big Bang, and God being an uncaused cause. In other words, the usual stuff.

What I found disturbing is that Andrews seems to think that positing "Goddidit" is an adequate explanation. He says that unbelievers come up with all sorts of ad hoc arguments to explain such things as the Big Bang, the apparent design of the universe, how something can exist rather than nothing, and such-like, but these explanations are all separate and unrelated. (I'm not sure that's true, but we'll let it pass.) Andrews claims that positing an all-powerful, all-knowing, timeless, spaceless, uncaused intelligence (or to put it another way, Goddidit) explains all these separate things with a single entity — and presumably is therefore more likely to be correct*.

Andrews must have a very odd idea of what constitutes explanation. In general when we attempt to explain something we don't understand, we do so in terms of things we do understand. Saying "Goddidit" isn't only the worst kind of intellectual cop-out — in theological terms it exhibits stupendous hubris.

As Karl Popper pointed out, if you have a theory that fits all circumstances without exception, in that there's nothing it can't explain, it isn't an explanation at all.

* My competing theory — that magic pixies did it — is similarly unified, but I wouldn't call it an explanation. Edgar Andrews is on Unbelievable? again today. I'm not looking forward to it much.

Burnee links for Thursday

2011-12-01T23:24:00.001Z

Republicans insane; want to establish theocracy « Why Evolution Is True
More on the "Thanksgiving Family forum", this time from Jerry Coyne.

Your Say: Faith schools should not be funded by the taxpayer | Bristol24-7
Faith schooling seems like a bad idea in itself, but expecting taxpayer funding is adding insult to injury.

Fair weather atheists and sunshine skeptics | Pharyngula
PZ explains his no-compromise stand, and though some might feel it's unpalatable, it's the only honest position.

Yes! The religion and science conflict, only cuter! | Pharyngula
This brilliant illustration of opposing mindsets could almost be a fable.

Atheist Elitism | Godless Girl
Thus spake articulate youth (I wish I'd been so clear-headed at her age).

Why are we following the US into a schools policy disaster? | Education | The Guardian
Future education to be based on the wrong model.

The Burzynski Clinic is using libel laws to silence critics of its cancer treatment | Rhys Morgan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Unbowed after threats including "we know where you live", Rhys gives his side of the story.

Four little words to sort the wheat from the chaff

2011-11-30T23:34:00.001Z

One question, central to the skeptical endeavour, is most likely to identify the real from the imaginary, the genuine from the fraudulent, and the merely deluded from the scam artist. Where claims are made, whether for the existence or power of deities, the efficacy of unusual medical treatments, or the reliability of money-making schemes, the one question that will provoke the most enlightening response is the question of evidence.

Suspicions will be initially aroused if claims lack substantiation. A request for substantiation is reasonable, but often the response is not. Unreasonable responses run the gamut from appeal to revelation (for deities) through conspiracy theory (for secret knowledge), pseudo-science (for nutritional supplements, young-earth creationism, infallible diets, the list goes on...), to legal action (for, amongst other things, alternative medicine).

"How do you know?" If we ask this question when presented with claims for, say, effective treatment for cancer, here are two possible responses (there may be others, but these are the important ones — the ones that tell us most about the motives of the responder).

Response 1: "We did tests. Here are the results. Judge for yourself."

Response 2: "Shut up, or we'll set the lawyers on you."

Time and again this four-word question — "How do you know?" — has separated genuine claims from those that are not. The latest example appears to be that of the Burzynski Clinic, offering a hugely expensive treatment for cancer with apparently no adequate scientific proof that it works — and this has been going on for over 30 years. A number of bloggers have raised doubts about Burzynski's treatment, questioning the evidence for its efficacy.

The Clinic's response: "Shut up, or we'll set the lawyers on you." It speaks volumes.

"Theology is piffle" — a debate worth having?

2011-11-30T23:05:00.001Z

As part of a recent "Burnee links" I posted this comment:

God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness - You Will Want This Book!
No. You won't. This book-promotion on Choosing Hats comes with a 73-minute video of three blokes (including the author) discussing the book. I watched the first 15 minutes, and I recommend it only as a perfect illustration of why theology isn't about anything that has the slightest relation to what's going on in the real world. These guys appear to be articulate and intelligent, so it's a shame they're devoting so much energy to such piffle.

Here's the video:

http://youtu.be/-davnzphHdc

...and here's a comment from Chris Bolt of Choosing Hats on the Burnee links post:

Thanks for the link Paul...I think.

:)

Any time you are willing to debate, "Theology is Piffle" let me know!

Is it worth debating? Probably not, because in order to "debate" sensibly about something, both sides must be clear that they are discussing the same thing. Theology is "the study of the nature of God" — and as far as that goes it's less useful than the study of Star Trek.

Theology as a subject is no more than literary criticism — as is Trek fandom. Trek fans can get carried away worrying about continuity lapses and such-like, forgetting that Trek is man-made and that the reason some things in Star Trek don't make sense is that it was created by a fallible human being who made mistakes.

Using literary criticism to analyse Star Trek may produce insights into the nature of Roddenberry, because we start with the knowledge that he really existed and he really did create Star Trek. And we also know that Roddenberry did not present Star Trek as factual representation.

Applying literary criticism to scripture, however, will not produce insights into the nature of God, because we don't know that scripture was written by God, or that God even existed in the first place (regardless of whether scripture is factual, mythical or metaphorical). The best that theology might be able to offer is some insight into the cultural milieu of scripture's authors — who were human. Unfortunately theology persists in its claim that it is studying God, so its efforts are doomed from the start.

Until theologians admit that they are engaged in nothing more than literary criticism they can be left to their own insular devices, just like the more extreme end* of Trek fandom, while the rest of us attend to the real world.

* I have nothing against the more moderate spectrum of Trek fandom. At least they know that Star Trek is fiction.

The Secret Life of Chaos

2011-11-20T19:59:00.001Z

I watched this one-off documentary yesterday (it was rebroadcast earlier this year, and it's taken me a while to get round to watching it again). Jim Al-Khalili explains how we get complexity from simplicity, and as far as abiogenesis is concerned the implication is clear. It makes "intelligent design" a superfluous theory.

The hour-long documentary is no longer available on iPlayer, but there's a dedicated webpage with several clips, and with luck it will be rebroadcast yet again. (It was apparently available on YouTube for a while, but all instances appear to have been removed.)

Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.

It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here? In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?

It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.

And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.

Inspiring stuff.

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-11-20T13:30:00.000Z

Matt Dillahunty vs. Mark Allison: Good Without God? - Atlanta atheism | Examiner.com
This was an interesting debate, which I screen-capped from the live stream and watched the next day at a more hospitable hour. Matt easily rebutted the same old arguments, but he did so in an engaging and often original way. (I'm aware that I share the reviewer's bias, so my feeling that his review is nevertheless accurate takes that into account.) You can watch a recording here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18582446

Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist and opposed to Darwinism | coelsblog
This is an excellent, thoroughly researched blogpost from Coel Hellier. It ought to be the last word on the common misapprehension that Hitler was motivated by atheism and Darwinism.
(Via Malcolm Stein)

A fine-tuned universe argues for atheism | coelsblog
More from Coel Hellier. This is a blog to follow.
(Via Malcolm Stein)

Faster than the speed of light?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili is not yet looking for edible underwear.

Richard Dawkins is wrong to call William Lane Craig morally repulsive | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Dreadful article, full of non sequiturs and nonsense.

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Did an Outside Entity Create the Universe?
If you use words in an unfamiliar way you can pretend to be highly significant - even if you're talking rubbish.

God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness - You Will Want This Book!
No. You won't. This book-promotion on Choosing Hats comes with a 73-minute video of three blokes (including the author) discussing the book. I watched the first 15 minutes, and I recommend it only as a perfect illustration of why theology isn't about anything that has the slightest relation to what's going on in the real world. These guys appear to be articulate and intelligent, so it's a shame they're devoting so much energy to such piffle.

New episode of Skepticule Extra

2011-11-19T21:55:00.001Z

In the latest episode of Skepticule Extra (at least, the latest to be made live), the three Pauls discuss William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith tour, an ineffective investigation into child abuse in Ealing, a project to alert audiences to fraudulent mediumship, and murderous obsession in the Bible. (In short, the usual stuff.)

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/11/skepextra-016-20111030.html

Listen, enjoy, comment (feedback@skepticule.co.uk).

Unbelievable?: The Conference — Big Questions Stream

2011-11-19T14:39:00.001Z

The Big Questions Stream is the last of three DVDs in this boxed set of Premier Christian Radio's one-day apologetics conference held in May this year. (I have already reviewed Disc 1 and Disc 2.)

Disc 3 begins with Mark Roques and his talk entitled: "Is Jesus the only way?"

It's a dynamic lecture, if a little unfocussed and with iffy sound. Roques claims that all people live by faith, giving as an example some rat-worshippers in India. He says there are four types of response to rat-worship, each conforming to a specific type. The first is that of, for example, James Bond, who would describe rat-worship as irrational. Roques claims this is a "modernist", secular worldview and what he describes is essentially a materialist worldview that denies the existence of anything supernatural. But as a first example it shows how ill-advised it is to use fictional examples to explain what you are claiming as fact. Religionists seem to do this a lot, as if they can't see how it's likely to be interpreted. By picking a fictional example you are essentially basing your factual claims on something that has been made up. If Bible-believers want to convince people that scripture is more than "made up" they should stop doing this.

The second example is the response of Paul Merton, who visited some rat-worshippers during a TV documentary. Merton apparently described rat-worship as "true for them" — which Roques says is a post-modernist worldview, in which everyone is entirely autonomous.

The rat-worshippers' response, however, is that rat-worship is "true" — which is Roques' example of the third type of response.

Roques' fourth type of response is exemplified by Christianity: "Don't worship rats, worship Christ."

He then goes on to list four views of salvation. The first is the "exclusivist" or "restrictivist" view, in which only those who have been called by God will go to eternity in heaven, while everyone else goes to eternal punishment. The second is an "inclusionist" but not "universalist" view, which allows even some people with no knowledge of Christ to be saved. The third is "theological pluralism", which holds that all religions can lead to God, and the fourth is the "universalist" view where everyone will be saved. Unsurprisingly there's disagreement on the matter, but as it's theology there's no way of conclusively resolving the issue — because theology is mostly fabrication. Incidentally Roques says he holds to the "inclusionist" view of salvation.

During a Christian apologetics conference there's bound to be a good deal of dissing of other religions, but some of those other religions have their own conferences, and what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Mark Roques is also guilty of conflation when he claims that for James Bond the god is science, and when later on in his talk he claims people have made "money" their god. Many religionists seem to do this, giving the impression that they are locked into a mindset in which it is impossible for anyone not to believe in a god of some kind. For such religionists, there's no such thing as a true atheist.

Roques is very big on story-telling (likening this to the parables of Jesus), but he needs to be clearer on the distinction between factual and fictional stories, otherwise people will be inevitably drawn to the idea that the whole of scripture and theology is just a series of stories. For myself I'm glad that in this lecture he used his faux "common" accent only once.

Next on Disc 3 is a two-hander with John Lennox and David Robertson on the question "Is there evidence for God?", and it has the assertions, the atheist-bashing, and what I can only describe as self-congratulatory smugness — coupled with attempts at mitigating false modesty — coming thick and fast. I found it difficult to keep up, abandoning my use of the pause button for note-taking purposes and just let the whole thing roll over me.

The usual canards are in abundance: atheists have no grounding for moral judgements, they are closed-minded to evidence by a priori assumptions, and they don't understand the meaning of faith. But throughout their discussion neither Lennox nor Robertson explain what precisely their subjective experience of God is. It's all a tacit admission of mysterious ineffability. They say much but convey little, and I found it frustrating waiting for either of them to deliver even one thing that might be a serious challenge to atheists — either "new atheists" or the plain vanilla variety.

Lennox makes a good point, however, about "nothing buttery" when decrying materialism, but I don't think he realises that he is actually validating the materialist view when he makes it.

So in response to the question "Is there evidence for God?" the answer must begin with "It depends what you mean by evidence." And if you're after compelling evidence, rather than just a subjective feeling, forget it.

Finally we have (again) Mark Roques, with "What about suffering?" beginning with the tale of Cornish Christian boy Thomas Pellow, captured by Turkish pirates and forced to be the slave of the Sultan. He converted to Islam (to save his own skin), and returned to his parents 30 years later. He was, we are told, sustained by his Christian faith.

Roques quotes David Hume's distillation of Epicurus's paradox — according to which an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God is an incoherent concept. Roques goes on to say, "I want to try and respond to this with some perhaps fresh material." This sounds promising but ultimately leaves us high and dry, as in delivering his talk he often seems to get diverted down side alleys, never returning to the place whence he came.

Asking the question, "Is it possible to be an atheist and also affirm the existence of evil?" Roques then examines materialism, quoting Richard Dawkins in River Out of Eden on the "blind, pitiless indifference" of the universe, as well as Dawkins' response to the 2006 Edge Annual Question — "What is your dangerous idea?"

Dawkins' contribution was "Let's all stop beating Basil's car" in which he floats the (not original) idea that just as Basil Fawlty's defective car is not to blame for its deficiencies, neither are we as material humans "at fault" for our own shortcomings. Given that these essays for the Edge were supposed to be radical and iconoclastic, it's disingenuous of Roques to point to Dawkins and claim that materialists deny that humans have any moral responsibility. The problem — as usual with debates of this kind — is that key terms haven't been properly defined. What does Roques mean by "evil" or "moral"? He's speaking to a largely Christian audience, so he may consider these terms don't need defining. But this is an apologetics conference and the audience will be going out to defend their faith. Without rigorous definition of terms, their efforts could well come across as unconvincing or even sloppy.

Here's an example of what I consider egregious sloppy thinking:

"Materialism declares that only physical things exist and so it is not possible to speak about purpose, goodness and wickedness. Evil is an illusion."

First off, we need to know what Roques means by purpose, goodness, wickedness and evil. By this measure we could claim that thoughts, being "non-physical", don't exist — when they clearly do.

"Evil does not exist. It is an illusion. A delusion. A toothfairy. This is what many atheists believe. It's their religion."

This is the worst kind of straw man fallacy, and teaching it at an apologetics conference is doing nobody any favours. Roques belabours his "no responsibility in materialism" point, but without saying what he means by responsibility. When we consider ideas of materialism and determinism in human action we must be careful what we dismiss. It is possible to hold to a materialist, determinist worldview in which free will does not depend on substance dualism, and still maintain that we are responsible for our actions. The question then becomes not what do we mean by "responsible"? but what do we mean by "we"? The entity — the human — held to be "responsible" comprises the sum total of who "we" are — our current thoughts and disposition, our memories, our experiences, our genetic make-up, our education, even our present environment. Such questions are way deeper and more subtle than Roques portrays in his talk.

Roques may even be going out on a limb relative to his religionist cohorts. He claims that Anselm and Aquinas were wrong about goodness, and that Plotinus — and Plato before him — were bad influences on early Christianity. He makes this challenge:

"If naturalism/materialism is true, then surely both goodness and evil are illusions. So where do you get your notions of evil and goodness from as you rail against God?"

See how disingenuous his approach is? "Rail against God?" This may be a reaction to Dawkins' deliberate caricature of the Old Testament God in The God Delusion, but such emotive language is inappropriate to an honest examination of the problem of evil.

Roques may be a dynamic speaker (despite seeming to lose his way several times in this talk), but the thrust of his argument is superficial. When pressed he is revealed — as far as I could see — to have nothing original or indeed useful to add to the morality debate. In the Q&A the first questioner asks why God allowed evil in the first place:

"There's a sense in which I don't know the answer to that deep question."

And as he offers nothing more of substance in response, there's a pronounced lack of any other sense in which he did know the answer.

So what did I get out of these three DVDs? I could have attended the conference itself, but I would still have needed the DVDs in order to see the parallel streams. The cost of the DVD set is comparable to the cost of the conference, but if I'd attended I would have needed to add the same again in travelling expenses. In any case I think I might have felt uncomfortable in an audience of mostly believers.

On the whole I found the talks as presented on the DVDs disappointing, but also — on another level — heartening. Much was made of equipping Christians for defending their faith in the wider world, but the armoury provided here appeared clumsy, outdated and ineffective. Not once did I find myself thinking, "Gosh, there's an argument I really must look into further." Maybe these evangelicals will be effective in converting teetering agnostics who are confused by recent new atheist literature — or maybe not. It's seems clear, however, that anyone who is happy to self-identify as an atheist on the basis of honest enquiry into the God-question will not find anything challenging on these DVDs.

Burnee links for Monday

2011-11-14T22:18:00.001Z

John Haught - Where's The Tea? - Skeptico
More on Haught vs Coyne, and discussing Haught's fallacious analogy.

A very silly calculation | Pharyngula
P. Z. Myers on the lottery fallacy.

The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time
Lists of this type always raise questions of arbitrariness — who's on it and who's not — but this one is nonetheless fascinating.

Massimo calls out Templeton « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne applauds Massimo Pigliucci's rejection of Templeton money.

The Rants of Cherry Black » Blog Archive » Middle of the night, joyful rantings!
Now that Giles is elsewhere (in London I believe), Pompey Skeptics in the Pub is pretty much Trish's sole responsibility. I don't think she's likely to give it up any time soon.

Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites
Another list? What the hell, why not?

Expecting the obvious is not "prediction"

2011-11-12T12:50:00.001Z

Craig A. Evans, in the title of chapter 32 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, asks "Did Jesus Predict His Violent Death and Resurrection?"

According to the Bible (extensively cited) he probably did. But what does it matter whether or not Jesus did so? Considering what he was up to, he might well have expected to fall foul of the indigenous authorities, the consequences of which were not difficult to foresee.

As for predicting his resurrection, this is what Evans has to say:

Did Jesus anticipate his resurrection? It is probable that he did. Once he began speaking of his death, Jesus very likely began speaking of his vindication through resurrection. Had he not anticipated it would have been very strange, for pious Jews very much believed in the resurrection of the dead.

It would have been strange, apparently, if Jesus had not "anticipated" his resurrection, so it remains unclear what point Evans is trying to make. To echo my response to a previous chapter in this section of the book, "So what?"

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952879

Burnee links for Thursday

2011-11-10T23:55:00.000Z

Stephen Law: Craig's website response re our debate
Stephen Law analyses William Lane Craig's analysis of their recent debate. (This also usefully provides a 'deep link' to Craig's analysis without registering at Reasonable Faith.)

Incentivizing online activism – a proposal « Skeptical Software Tools
Tim Farley has an interesting idea (yes, another one). But I'm not a gamer, so I'd probably not be any good at this.

Testing psychics « Derren Brown Blog
Why Sally Morgan should submit to a test — if she's a real psychic.

William Lane Craig and the problem of pain | Pharyngula
P. Z. Myers calls out Craig on his mangled "science". I heard Craig's argument about the pain of animals for the first time at his recent debate with Stephen Law. I thought at the time a lot of pet-owners would vehemently disagree with him.

Skepticule Record — Pompey Skeptics in the Pub

2011-11-10T23:43:00.001Z

Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub was tonight, and very good it was too. Audio will be posted as a Skepticule Record episode in due course. Meanwhile you can listen to last month's talk by Alec Muffett:

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/11/skeprec-007-20111013.html

"Sex, Lies and Instant Messenger"

Enjoy (but not too much...)

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-11-06T23:28:00.000Z

PRESS RELEASE: Big news for the online atheist community.
The latest herding exercise — maybe this one could work...

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: Coyne vs. Haught - advantage, Coyne
Russell Blackford on John Haught's whining.

What eight years of writing the Bad Science column have taught me | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian
The state of play in Bad Science, and why it's not all bad news (plus lots of links to interesting stuff).

Guardian writer foolishly claims that religion answers factual questions « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne on Keith Ward's hubristic Guardian piece.

Skeptics in the Planetarium

2011-11-06T23:15:00.000Z

(Now that I've booked my own tickets for this event, I'm happy to spread the news...)

It's going to be amazing — just look at that line-up! Crispian Jago has all the lovely details, so go to his site for further links and info about the performers.

There's also a Facebook event page to confirm your attendance (if you want to) and see who else is going. Oh the anticipation...

Moral imperatives explained

2011-11-06T22:49:00.000Z

It's been a while since I embedded Morality 2, but here's the third instalment of QualiaSoup's excellent YouTube series on morality:

http://youtu.be/sN-yLH4bXAI

Seventeen minutes of astounding moral clarity — definitely worth the wait. So far this series has turned out to be the most lucid, concise and comprehensive analysis of morality I've seen.

Biblical authority in doubt?

2011-11-05T20:10:00.000Z

Ben Witherington III follows his previous chapter in Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God with "Jesus as God", in which he quotes so extensively from the Bible that I wonder if the editors put the sections of their book in the wrong order. This, the third section, is titled The Question of Jesus, but I can't help wondering if it should have come after the fourth (which I've yet to read), titled The Question of the Bible.

I query this because the book is supposed to be directed at skeptics as well as believers. To quote from the back cover:

Challenges to belief in God as he is revealed in the Bible have always existed, and today is no exception. In Evidence for God, leading Christian scholars and apologists provide compelling arguments that address the latest and most pressing questions about God, science, Jesus, the Bible, and more, including:
Did Jesus really exist?
Is Jesus the only way to God?
What about those who have never heard the gospel?
Is today's Bible what was originally written?
What about recently publicised gospels that aren't in the Bible?
Is intelligent design really a credible explanation of the origins of our world?
and much more

All but one of those bulleted points rely on the Bible, so shouldn't the Bible's provenance be addressed first? Perhaps the editors felt that the arguments in support of the Bible would not be as convincing as those from science and philosophy. We shall see.

Meanwhile I can summarise chapter 31 as, "Jesus is God because he said so, though he was sensibly cagey about it in certain circumstances."

Not very convincing.

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952873

Does it matter how Jesus prayed?

2011-11-05T19:14:00.000Z

Chapter 30 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God is "Son of God" by Ben Witherington III. It seems mostly to be an argument for the idea that Jesus was God's son — because he was reported, in the Bible, to have said as much. The whole thing is so confused, however, that it's hard to draw any conclusions from it.

Witherington points out that Jesus prayed to God using the term "Abba", which is a term of endearment. This, he says, shows that Jesus thought of himself as the "son" of God as distinct from the prevalent usage where kings were also considered "sons" of God. But Witherington immediately undermines this proposition by stating that Jesus also taught his disciples to pray to God using the term "Abba". So this term does not, after all, denote a special exclusive relationship of the kind usually claimed for Jesus.

Added to which, the chapter doesn't address the issue of reliability that's inevitably triggered by a passage such as this:

There can be no doubt however, that Jesus did not view His relationship to God as simply identical to the relationship King David had with God. For one thing, it tells us a lot about Jesus that He prayed to God as Abba which is the Aramaic term of endearment which means dearest Father (see Mark 14:36, Abba is not slang, it does not mean "Daddy.")

We have no records of anything Jesus wrote. We cannot know how he prayed, only how he was reported to have prayed. Witherington's entire chapter is scuppered by his very first sentence:

One of the big mistakes in Christian apologetics is just focusing on what Jesus publicly claimed to be.

There's been much discussion over two millennia about Jesus' public statements — how accurately they were reported, whether his chroniclers' agenda influenced the slant of their reports, or even whether their memories were reliable given that they wrote nothing about Jesus for decades. What Witherington is talking about, however, are Jesus' private prayers. What chance have we of reliably knowing anything about those? And even if we did know, what difference would it make?

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952901

Miraculous irrationality

2011-11-04T00:16:00.000Z

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? was a discussion between Gary Habermas, Christian, and Geoff Campos, atheist, recorded during the Bethinking apologetics conference at Westminster Chapel, as part of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour. I listened with mixed feelings, as there had been a brief possibility that the three Pauls of Skepticule Extra could have been the ones in conversation with Gary Habermas, rather than Geoff Campos. In the event I think Geoff gave a good account of himself and his position with regard to the question at issue — which was, "Is it rational to believe in miracles?"

Nevertheless I found myself at times disagreeing with everyone in the conversation. A good deal was said about Geoff's stance on the status of the "supernatural", and Justin Brierley — moderating the discussion — made the inevitable point about denial of supernature closing off options, suggesting that perhaps Geoff was being closed-minded if he did not accept that supernatural events were even possible.

This is an invidious position to hold in the face of theistic miracle claims, but I think it's a result of not defining one's terms. Though the definition of "supernatural" was explored, I don't recall anyone clarifying what was meant by "rational". For an event to be rationally believed in, that event must conform to reason and logic. Its causes and effects must be capable of description in rational terms, and those causes and effects must lie entirely in the physical realm — because the physical realm of causes and effects is the only realm in which rationally observed phenomena have been verified to occur.

So the question posed by Justin for this show contained the seeds of its own irrationality. It's not rational to believe in miracles, because by definition miracles are effects without rational causes.

Streaming audio here:
http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={B9C493B0-276B-492F-82B7-C2C5D5F06EFA}

Download mp3 here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/f4ac58fb-9cf3-4ad7-aa49-1392546b275f.mp3

Burnee belated links for Thursday

2011-11-03T22:06:00.000Z

William Lane Craig on Radio 4 - steve's posterous
It was Andrew Copson who made the comments Steve Zara refers to. That such comments are finding a wider audience (in the light of Craig's UK tour) will surely lead to more exposure of his disingenuous debating techniques.

Whom does God really endorse, anyway? | The Atheist Experience
This is a really obvious question. Will it ever be asked?

Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list « Why Evolution Is True
This is an awesome blogpost.

C4ID still doesn’t understand science. | Wonderful Life
"It looks designed." Therefore, what — scientifically speaking?

Mississippi’s shame | Pharyngula
P. Z. Myers gets to grips with a skewed understanding of "personhood".

Why I am an atheist – Cathy Oliver | Pharyngula
P. Z. Myers is currently using his blog to publish people's affirmative atheism stories. This is an excellent example.

will someone rid me of this turbulent language | Robinince's Blog
The right to freedom of speech also incurs some duties.

Theology crushed

2011-11-03T21:43:00.000Z

This is a debate between John Haught and Jerry Coyne, on the question of the compatibility of science and religion. The video contains one speech from each, and then cuts off as the Q&A begins. But never mind that — Jerry Coyne's comprehensive take-down of the follies of theology is a joy to behold:

http://vimeo.com/31505142

2011 Bale Boone Symposium - Science & Religion: Are They Compatible? from UK Gaines Center on Vimeo.

Jerry Coyne pulled no punches here, and apparently his uncompromising stance has upset his opponent.

UPDATE 2011-11-05: The Q&A session is now available:

http://vimeo.com/31599587

Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? October 12, 2011 Q+A with Jerry Coyne and John Haught from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

The Evil God debate: William Lane Craig vs Stephen Law

2011-10-29T22:42:00.002+01:00

Listeners to the Pod Delusion of about a month ago will have heard Premier Christian Radio host Justin Brierley promoting the Reasonable Faith Tour — a week and a half of debates and lectures throughout the UK by American philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Much was made, then and since, of Richard Dawkins' refusal to engage William Lane Craig in a formal debate, though the fuss seems to have had more to do with promoting the tour than real regret at not having the the world's most famous living atheist on the speaking list. Clearly Dawkins could not "win", either in debate or out of it. If he accepted he would be lending his name to a religious event — which would be trumpeted far and wide — and if he declined, his refusal would be (and was) … trumpeted far and wide. Whatever he did would be (and was) used as promotional material for the Reasonable Faith Tour. (Perhaps the three Pauls should invite Richard Dawkins on to the Skepticule Extra podcast. I'm sure I've an empty chair I could put by for him.)

Until recently the promotional hoo-hah was of only peripheral interest to me, as I was heartily sick of listening to Craig's debates, especially after those with Lawrence Krauss and Sam Harris, both of whom have original things to contribute about their respective fields, but whose points Craig roundly ignored. When Polly Toynbee withdrew her name from the tour's speaking list after having initially accepted, I sympathised with what I considered a wise decision. For myself I felt I'd had enough of Craig, and I wasn't interested in attending any of the tour.

When Stephen Law "stepped up to the plate", however, I felt differently. Here was a professional philosopher, known as an atheist and clearly a deep thinker — as his previous appearances on Justin Brierley's radio programme Unbelievable? had demonstrated. Suddenly the prospect of yet another William Lane Craig debate became intriguing, as perhaps this time the Craig steamroller might have something concrete and unyielding in its path.

And that's why I found myself in Westminster Central Hall on Monday 17^th October, for the initial event of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour — a debate between a Christian and an atheist on the question, "Does God exist?"

I had arrived early to secure a good seat in the magnificent and capacious building, and was in the third row. I made my own estimate of its seating capacity — about 2000 on two levels. I thought it likely that the lower level would be mostly filled, probably to about 900 (a good crowd by any standard, for an event such as this). But as 7:30 approached — and I'd witnessed the separate arrivals of William Lane Craig and Stephen Law — the upper level began to fill up too. Five minutes before the start I estimated about 1800 people were seated in the hall (Justin Brierley has since mentioned an attendance of 1700, so I wasn't far out).

Stephen Law isn't best at the podium — his approach is probably better suited to the discussion or small seminar format. William Lane Craig on the other hand has the big speeches to big audiences down pat — but this is nothing new. Anyone who has seen a few debates by Craig knows what to expect, so I should not have been surprised to hear him launch into three of his tried and tested arguments: the Kalām cosmological argument, the argument from objective moral values, and the argument from the resurrection of Jesus. In terms of presentation Stephen Law is not as slick or as superficially convincing as William Lane Craig, but in terms of philosophical engagement Law can clearly hold his own.

I shall not detail each speech here — this has been extensively done elsewhere*, and the unedited audio of the entire two hours is available for streaming and download at the Unbelievable? website. What follows are mostly my immediate impressions of the evening, jotted down during my return train journey that night, interspersed with retrospective comments.

I expected Law to use his Evil God Challenge — and he did, in my view to solid effect, and Craig's efforts to brush it aside were, in my view, ineffective. As usual Craig spoke first, and as usual he attempted to define the scope of the debate by stating what his opponent must do in order to refute him. The reason he does this is so that when he sums up he can point out anything in his list that his opponent didn't address, and claim victory by default. In this case however, Stephen Law — speaking second — made it clear that he would present one argument only. Then he presented his Evil God Challenge, which I've heard him deliver before but never with such clarity and depth.

The Evil God Challenge goes something like this: the evidential problem of evil is well known — with so much gratuitous suffering in the world, both now and in the past, how could an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God allow it? Theists have developed theories — theodicies — to explain how such a good God could allow so much suffering, so much "evil". Whether you think these theodicies are effective reconciliations of the problem of evil will probably depend on your own perspective.

The effectiveness or otherwise of these theodicies, however, isn't relevant to Stephen Law's Evil God Challenge. Even if theists try to explain suffering by claiming it's an inevitable result of God allowing us free will, or that we cannot know the mind of God and he might have good reasons unknown to us to allow so much suffering, or that suffering is necessary in order to throw goodness into sharp relief — all of these arguments (or theodicies) can be applied in reverse to the idea that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient but omnimalevolent God who is seeking to maximise the amount of suffering in the world. But how can the Evil God exist when there's so much good in the world? The evidential problem of good is just as effective in disproving the existence of an evil God as the evidential problem of evil is in disproving the existence of a good God. The two scenarios aren't necessarily entirely symmetrical, but they're symmetrical enough to maintain that if observation is sufficient to dismiss the Evil God Hypothesis — and most people seem to agree that it is — it's also sufficient to dismiss the Good God Hypothesis.

Craig tried to refute the Evil God Hypothesis — or rather, to shrug it off — by simply defining his God as good. But this is an arbitrary definition that can be just as simply reversed, as Law demonstrated. Law quite rightly called out Craig for resorting to the mystery card — Craig predictably claimed that we cannot know what's in the mind of God — that God might have morally sufficient reasons to allow suffering, reasons of which we're unaware. That's not good enough, as Law pointed out.

During the post-debate discussion Law objected to Craig's claiming he had conceded that the cosmological argument was proof of God's existence because he didn't address it. Craig defended his tactic as legitimate in the debate format, which goes to show that he's not debating in order to get closer to the truth, and it reinforces the widely held impression amongst atheists that Craig is only interested in point-scoring. Law then took the opportunity to answer Craig's cosmological argument with a simple statement that he doesn't know why the universe exists, but that doesn't give theists a free pass to say their God did it.

As Law further explained, just because he doesn't know what, if anything, caused the universe, he is nevertheless justified in ruling out certain hypothetical causes. One such is the Evil God, and by reflection — the essence of the Evil God Challenge — another is the Good God. Law also rebutted Craig's evidence for the resurrection of Jesus by citing corroborated UFO reports, showing just how flawed human cognition can be, even en masse.

I think Law put up a good case against Craig, who is acknowledged as a formidable debating opponent. Craig's success at debating, however, relies less on his arguments, which have multiple flaws — some of which Law highlighted — than on his debating style: speaking first, defining the limits of the topic, and listing what his opponent must do to refute him (regardless of what his opponent might think). Added to which Craig is clearly an accomplished public speaker, even if he's usually saying much the same thing every time.

In the face of such debating prowess Stephen Law stuck to his guns — he had a good argument and refused to be deflected. But he also showed that he's no one-trick pony. He's known for the Evil God Challenge, but he was also able to identify the flaws in Craig's use of the cosmological argument (despite not initially addressing it) and the argument from the resurrection of Jesus.

I had originally decided not to attend this debate because I was fed up with William Lane Craig's monotonous repetition of the same arguments, even though I think the question, "Does God Exist?" is the only question in all of theology worth asking (and of course it's the one question theology itself never properly addresses).

The reluctance of certain atheists to go up against Craig is understandable. Craig takes debating seriously and is in it to win. He doesn't seem to be interested in an exchange of ideas — rather, it's all about scoring points. Stephen Law, however, appeared wise to Craig's technique, requiring him to address the challenge in depth rather than letting him shrug it off. This was especially noticeable in the discussion at the end, when Craig couldn't exploit the restrictions of the debate format.

On the whole I'm glad I changed my mind.

*Deeper analysis of the debate abounds online. Here are a few samples, beginning with Stephen Law's own notes:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-criticisms-of-craigs-moral-and.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/opening-speech-craig-debate.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-closing-statement.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/notes-for-responding-to-craigs-possible.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/brief-sketch-of-my-overall-argument-in.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-remaining-notes-from-craig-debate.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/thanks-for-all-feedback-re-wlc-debate.html

A comprehensive graphical analysis:
http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-debate-argument-map/

Randal Rauser's typically idiosyncratic (and continuing) view:
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-one/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/was-stephen-law-guilty-of-a-bait-and-switch/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-2-craigs-first-rebuttal/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/where-stephen-law-goes-wrong-with-his-evil-god-argument/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/did-a-fairy-kill-stephen-laws-apple-tree/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-2-laws-first-rebuttal/

Paul Wright's analysis:
http://pw201.livejournal.com/159259.html

A Christian who judged Stephen Law a rare winner in this debate:
http://apologiapad.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/bill-craig-loses-a-debate-and-all-sorts-of-goodies-are-revealed/

Why I call myself a humanist

2011-10-23T15:24:00.000+01:00

This is essentially a response to a post by Clio Bellenis on the Hampshire Skeptics Society blog, "Why I do not call myself a humanist". I'm posting it here as well for completeness, but any comments ought to go over there.

Ever since I came to consider myself an atheist (that’s many decades ago now) I’ve maintained that my atheism is nothing more than the lack of belief in any gods. My atheism is not a worldview, though my worldview is necessarily derived from atheism — and I find humanism is the closest fit to that worldview. The “good without God” issue is a clear and straightforward one for me now, though I struggled for a long time with the persistent notion that my moral grounding had to be rooted in Christianity. These days I consider the idea of moral values being based on scripture to be an admission of moral failure — that blindly and unquestioningly following rules handed down from above is an abdication of moral responsibility. It’s far better, in my view, to examine moral decisions based on context and consequences, even if such decisions flout so-called moral rules.

The point about “humanism” being the obvious default stance is a valid one, but humanism as a consensus view needs to be seen in the light of what it’s up against. This is especially important in relation to the question of morality. The Christian view, in this officially Christian country, is that it may well be true that one can live a good life without religion, but that the ability to discern good from evil (even when atheists do it) is only possible because of religion (or to use the jargon — because everyone, even an atheist, is made in the image of God). It’s this erroneous view that humanism endeavours to correct, and why I’m happy to label myself a humanist.

Wanna hear a spooky story?

2011-10-19T23:27:00.000+01:00

I don't believe in ghosts. I'm extremely skeptical of the "supernatural", whether we're talking fairies, spirits or gods. But I love a good horror story.

PodCastle is a free audio fiction podcast that serves up a short fantasy story every week, and though it's mainly devoted to fantasy (that is, not horror), about this time each year — approaching All Hallows' Eve — it naturally gravitates towards stories of a ghoulish nature.

I've a soft spot for PodCastle as I was honoured to be asked to narrate its inaugural episode back in April 2008, "Come Lady Death" by Peter S. Beagle. Since then I've narrated a few more, and the most recent has just gone live, "The Gateway of the Monster" by William Hope Hodgson.

Even though I don't believe in ghosts, reading a good horror story several times in preparation for narration, then actually narrating it, and then spending a good deal of time editing the audio, can be a very immersive process — so much so that I can well imagine what it must be like to believe such things are real....

Unbelievable?: The Conference — Disc 2

2011-10-16T21:38:00.000+01:00

Following my review last month of the first disc of this three-DVD set, here's my assessment of the second, which is the Bible Stream.

First up is David Instone-Brewer with "Can I trust the Bible?" He begins with a reference in John in the King James Version to some aspect of the Trinity, which is omitted in modern translations because it is reckoned to be something a copyist noted in the margin, and which was then erroneously included in the main text by a subsequent copyist. This is the kind of thing Bart Erhman has been pointing out for years and is probably nothing new.

Instone-Brewer goes on to claim that many copies had errors and omissions due entirely to personal whim — such as when someone made a copy for use by his family and censored some passages he considered unsuitable for a family audience.

For me this calls into question the accuracy of even the earliest copies. Even though there are thousands of handwritten copies there are no original manuscripts, but Instone-Brewer claims that the profusion of copies allows scholars to infer the original from the many slight differences between the many copies. That's all very well, assuming that the the copies derive from different levels of the biblical "evolutionary tree". But what if they all derive from a single, early copy that contained significant errors? The closer any early copy is to the original, the fewer examples there will be on which to perform such statistical inference, and the less likely any errors are to be correctable. In fact statistical inference will probably reinforce such errors rather than detect and eliminate them.

Instone-Brewer seems to contradict himself when he says "nothing is lost", only a few minutes after declaring his opinion that the ending of Mark is, in fact, lost. He also claims, "Thousands of copies, thousands of problems, but we've got the original." Except, as he's already explained, we haven't got the original. He claims to be able to derive the original, but I think his confidence is misplaced, especially as in answer to a question he says that original texts are fragile and don't last very long. They could, therefore, have been copied erroneously, perhaps only a few times, before being lost forever. Many of those errors are likely to be undetectable.

He also makes the claim that oral sources are more reliable than written sources. This is a claim I've heard before (from, for example, Michael Licona), but it sounds more like wishful thinking than hard fact. Stories are indeed passed down through the generations, but they are embellished and altered for dramatic and polemical effect — and this is an accepted aspect of the oral tradition. No-one expects these stories to be literally or historically true, especially when those telling them have a specific agenda.

Instone-Brewer mentions a stone inscription (apparently now on display in a Paris museum) that describes a Roman Emperor's edict that moving a body from a Jewish grave is to be punishable by death. Instone-Brewer then hints (I think) that this is some kind of evidence for the resurrection of Christ. To me it seems like evidence that the emperor was aware of a religious cult that had persisted after its deceased leader's body had been stolen from a grave, and was anxious to prevent a repetition.

Not being particularly well-read in the New Testament I must thank David Instone-Brewer for pointing out so many problems within the text that I wasn't previously aware of. It seems to me that every so-called justification of the reliability of scripture merely points up its inconsistencies and unreliability, as well as the lengths to which Bible scholars will go in their attempts to validate its historicity.

I'm not one of those who doubt the historical existence of Jesus, but nothing Instone-Brewer says suggests that the supernatural claims of the New Testament are true.

David Instone-Brewer also delivers the second talk on this disc, "Is God a moral monster?" — which is the title of Paul Copan's recent book (which I've not read).

He begins by quoting Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, where Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament (he has subsequently stated that he included this over-the-top description largely for comic effect).

Instone-Brewer goes on to describe the morality of the Old Testament, stating that times were different then, but nevertheless the laws of Israel were far more lenient than those of its neighbours. This may have been so, but such an argument skewers the whole idea of objective morality, making it subject to context and prevailing conditions. He confirms this in an answer to a question about the Ten Commandments, claiming that "Thou shalt not kill" doesn't mean you must never kill anybody. In answer to other, harder questions he simply plays the mystery card — apparently morality was different in the past, so much so that we in the modern world cannot understand it.

With regard to sacrifices and slavery he reiterates the claim that the laws of Israel were more lenient than anywhere else. So to modern eyes, it seems, they were relatively less immoral. He answers a question about stoning one's disobedient children to death by going on about drunkards — and I can only assume he didn't properly hear the question. He admits he doesn't understand disproportionate punishment, yet still maintains that God isn't a moral monster.

Inevitably there's a question about the slaughter of the Canaanites, and he gives a good explanation concerning how children are honour-bound to avenge the killing of their parents, and the invading forces knew this, and therefore had to kill them to prevent the grown-up children coming after them years later. Unfortunately this contradicts William Lane Craig's insistence (repeated just this morning on BBC Radio) that the children would be glad to be despatched to Heaven. I think it's safe to say that dishonoured children would not be glad to go to Heaven. This last contradiction is yet another example of the contortions Christians will perform in order to twist their faith into places it will not fit.

Some of William Lane Craig's points feature in the final talk on this disc, given by Jay Smith: "Is there evidence for the resurrection?"

Smith states that the resurrection is central to Christian belief, then says he will use Craig's eight points for discussing the resurrection with Muslims and others. I lost count, but the points he raises are the prophecies in the Old and New Testaments, the mentions by Greeks, Romans and Josephus, the empty tomb and the marble inscription already mentioned by David Instone-Brewer.

As in his talk about Islam, Smith soon gets into preacher-mode, which I found a little wearing, but his confident pronouncements seem to rely more on presentation style than logic. He's no more than superficially persuasive, in my view. For instance, I find nothing persuasive about citing Old or New Testament prophecy in support of the actual bodily resurrection of Christ. As has been pointed out, those who wrote the New Testament were intimately familiar with the Old Testament, and they knew what was expected of them. Smith himself hints at this mechanism when he describes the Mithras legends as post-Christ, claiming that the reason such legends are similar to the Gospel accounts of Jesus is that they were copied from them. To me this is applying a double standard.

Smith also states that when a messiah dies, the movement that follows him usually also dies, but this didn't happen in the case of Christ, and this is evidence for the truth of the resurrection. The followers of Christ, however, would have been aware of this tendency, giving them strong motivation for somehow claiming that their messiah was still alive.

Jay Smith has comprehensive arguments with which to knock down the Qur'an and incidentally claims it was not written by Muhammad, but hearing his (understandably) biased approach to Christian scripture I have doubts about his other claims.

The final disc is titled Big Questions — I wonder what that will be about.

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-10-16T14:26:00.000+01:00

Matt Slick defends “honor killing”: a woman’s hymen is worth more than her life | The Atheist Experience
So much for "absolute morality".

Guest post: Baroness Greenfield, junk neuroscience, and the dangers of video games – Telegraph Blogs
Dean Burnett puts Greenfield's alarmism in perspective.

Formal debates are a win for atheists - National atheism | Examiner.com
While I support the general thrust of this article — that such debates can be ultimately beneficial to the atheist side, I'm not so sure that "atheists dominate the internet". Straightforward Google searches on "Christian" and "Atheist" appear to contradict that assertion.

C4ID's Dr Noble responds to Attenborough—in the style of a creationist. | British Centre for Science Education

Alastair Noble must be getting desperate. He wants children to be taught about "intelligent design" in science classes, even though he and his cohorts have never presented any scientific evidence to support it. They often claim to have a way of reliably "detecting" design, yet they never produce it — it's all talk.

They object to criticisms that intelligent design is unscientific, yet don't seem to understand what science is. When we try to find a scientific explanation for something we don't understand, we attempt to do so in terms of other things we do understand. With ID there's no such attempt, because ID proponents simply don't have an explanation, or even the beginnings of an explanation.

And school science classes are not the place for speculative ideas — schoolchildren should be taught accepted science only. For in-depth analysis and an effective way forward in science education see James Williams' new book How Science Works.

Apostles have been raised up by God | Butterflies and Wheels
Seriously? I mean, really? Demonstrably off-planet crazy.

What do we know?

2011-10-08T23:00:00.000+01:00

Actually, not much.

How do we know that we are not brains in vats? That we aren't software simulations in an advanced super-computer? That the entire universe of which we think we are a part wasn't created intact (complete with all our memories) last Thursday?

We don't. We can make a basic Cartesian assumption that "thinking" of some sort is going on somewhere, by the fact that we use thinking to make that assumption. But apart from that, we really don't know.

This is a scary thought. (But it is, at least, a thought.)

So where do we go from here? If we can't know anything, what's the basis of doing anything? Why go on, in the face of such uncertainty?

We have senses that seem to show us the world in a generally consistent way, so in the absence of certainty we can proceed in what appears to be a pragmatic manner. In the absence of certainty we can construct a worldview based on probability. We can live a life of induction, but we must first assume that induction works. Our senses may subsequently tell us that such an assumption appears to be consistent with reality as we perceive it. And so we build. Of such pragmatism is civilisation wrought — in sweat, in toil, in reasoned argument, in compassion. It is, we find, worth striving for.

For some people this isn't enough. They're unhappy with such uncertainty, and demand to be told in no uncertain terms, how things really are.

Such people will search for certainty, and believe they find it in religious scripture. They will seize upon the sacred text that purports to reveal in no uncertain terms the secrets of the universe. They will base their lives upon it, proclaiming its inerrancy. It must be inerrant — it's the truth they've been seeking, and if someone is so crass or unwise to question the inerrancy of scripture they'll explain, at tortuous length, why it contains not a single contradiction, and how it grounds their very existence.

But they're wrong. They're no better off than the rest of us — in fact they're worse off, having deluded themselves into thinking they are certain, in a world where certainty is impossible.

After some delay, the latest Skepticule Extra is available

2011-10-08T20:35:00.000+01:00

Many thanks to James Williams for being our guest on Skepticule Extra. This show covers science teaching, statistical religiosity in Britain and the mendacity (or otherwise) of the Jehovah's Witnesses (including the editorship of the Watch Tower).

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/10/skepextra-015-20110918.html

Why I don't care about theology

2011-10-08T20:22:00.000+01:00

Theology: "The study of the nature of God."

That's not the only definition, but it's a popular one and it's the one I'm using when I say I don't care about theology.

Take this conversation as an example:

http://fundamentally-flawed.com/2011/10/01/the-slick-files-volume-3/

It's a half-hour exchange between Alex Botten and Matt Slick, when the former called in to the latter's radio show. (It's actually the third such exchange — go to the the Fundamentally Flawed website to find the others.)

As evident in the recording Alex is knowledgeable about the Christian Bible and has several questions for Matt concerning such matters as the omniscience of God, original sin and how Jesus could be fully God and fully human at the same time. Matt is also knowledgeable and had answers for these questions. That's not to say that these answers were acceptable to Alex (or to me), but the point is that Matt had answers. Theologians and apologists always have answers for such questions. On the matter of Jesus being God and man, the answer was plainly nonsensical (as opposed to only vaguely nonsensical in the cases of God's omniscience and the concept of original sin).

But you're never going to get sensible answers to such questions, because the answers are designed to be nonsensical. Take the Trinity, for example — the only answer any theologian or apologist can give as an "explanation" of the three-in-one is to play the mystery card. If the Trinity could be explained in everyday, straightforward language that actually made sense, it would cease to be extraordinary, and without such extraordinary elements Christianity would be a mundane belief system that failed to move people. By including elements that are impervious to explanation and rational analysis, a belief system becomes "special", "mysterious" and "transcendent". In some ways such a system resembles conspiracy theory — belief in something against the trend, being party to secret knowledge, and belief that one has discovered a path to a higher power.

Here are some more conversations:

http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/390d6d13-5ee2-4bdd-bcf8-1ed6d7540c7a.mp3

This is the Unbelievable? programme in which Peter S. Williams answered questions from listeners, coincidentally including one of those Alex raised with Matt: "How can Jesus be both God and man?", "Is there any evidence that Christians really have a 'relationship' with Jesus?" and "Was Jesus a failed apocalyptic prophet?" There are theological answers to these questions, and if you accept theology as a path to knowledge you might find Peter's answers acceptable. I don't, and I don't. In fact I find the questions mostly irrelevant in the light of theology's refusal to deal with the fundamental question, "Does God exist?"

Until that's properly addressed, any study of the "nature of God" is begging the question.

A presuppositional impasse

2011-10-05T21:59:00.001+01:00

In the Skepticule Extra Facebook group, Skepticule co-host Paul Baird posted a link to an episode of the Fundamentally Flawed podcast in which Alex Botten and Jim Gardner took on Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate. It was a while before I got around to listening to it (it's over an hour and a half long), but last night I did listen, and while doing so I posted my thoughts and reactions as comments on Paul B's link. Skepticule Extra is a closed Facebook group, so for the benefit(!) of non-members I've pasted my comments below (others' comments omitted, as I didn't see them until I'd finished listening):

Paul Jenkins Listening to this at the moment. Not kicked anything yet.
23 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Just got to Sye's complaint about Alex's blog comments. Convenient he exhibits his paranoia at the point his schtick is evidently failing to make any progress.
23 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Is Sye attempting to provoke Alex into hanging up on him?
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Here's my take on a couple of questions: 1. Is it possible for an omnipotent God (if he exists) to reveal something to me such that I can be certain of it? Answer: no, because "possibility" necessarily excludes "certainty" — that is, the question is incoherent. 2. Is it possible that we don't know anything at all? Answer: yes, apart from the knowledge that "thinking" is going on somewhere. But we function in the world nevertheless — amazing, isn't it?
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins ‎3. Is appealing to your senses and reason to justify your senses and reason a viciously circular argument? Answer: no. It's circular but it's not vicious. And appealing to scripture to justify scripture is also circular. 4. Can the laws of logic change? Answer: this question is incoherent because it misunderstands the nature of logic. Logic isn't something over and above the physical universe, it is a characteristic of existence. Without logic there is no existence. Logic is inextricably entwined with existence and causality, and our understanding of it may change with our understanding of reality. Eric's point about the ontology of logic is invalid because his conception of the nature of logic is false.
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Coming to the end now. And I think Eric is about to ask Alex and Jim to repent (if previous experience is anything to go by).
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins It was Sye who asked this time, coupled with a threat of Hell.
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Yay! subjective morality!
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins The end.
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Now I'm going to hold my head under the cold tap.
22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins BTW, Jim's description of Sye's refusal to debate scripture with a non-believer as a "cop-out" is spot on. Sye is effectively refusing to debate scripture with anyone who disagrees with him. Maybe that's why he's so fond of the presuppositional approach — anyone who falls for the binary nature of the TAG is easy prey, while those who don't will necessarily stall at the first question because they realise it's a false dichotomy.
22 hours ago ·

Conspiring to persuade

2011-09-26T23:39:00.002+01:00

I spent yesterday (Sunday) in London at the CFI's Conspiracy Theory Day.

My motivation for attending this event was David Aaronovitch's scheduled appearance. He's written a book on conspiracy theories and I missed out on an event last year at which he spoke. So I thought this would be a good way to catch up on what I missed.

It turns out Aaronovitch is not well and regrettably had to withdraw. Stephen Law, Provost of CFI UK, decided to fill the gap with someone from "the other side" and so we had a talk by 9/11 truther Ian R. Crane. The audience, too, comprised a fair proportion of conspiracy theorists (though I dare say not all of them care for that characterisation).

I took many photographs of the various speakers (in poor light, so they might not be good enough to display), and James O'Malley of The Pod Delusion was there to record audio of the event. Professional video cameras (on tripods, the whole bit) were also in evidence. It seems therefore that the event will be archived. I intend to write about the various talks in more detail, but for now I'll offer some brief and fairly random thoughts.

Chris French and Robert Brotherton from Goldsmith's Anomalous Psychology Research Unit, as well as Karen Douglas from the University of Kent's School of Psychology, gave accounts of research showing that conspiracy theorists differ from religionists in a fundamental way. Believers in the one true faith tend to discount all other religions as false, whereas people who buy into one particular conspiracy theory are likely to endorse several others as well. It's apparently rare for someone to believe in only one conspiracy theory while discounting all others.

Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller talked about the fall-out from their 2010 paper "The Power of Unreason" and the role of the internet in that fall-out. All the talks were followed with Q&A sessions, during which the make-up of the audience became more apparent. Despite explicit statements by the earlier speakers that their areas of concern did not include the veracity or otherwise of the conspiracy theorists' claims, several questions focussed on such detail. This was not surprising given the audience composition — the event had been publicised and anyone was free to buy a ticket.

The final speaker was Ian R. Crane, who touched on the definition of conspiracy theory (as previous speakers had been careful to elucidate) but soon went on to present the "9/11 truth" viewpoint. Some of the characteristics described in previous talks were amply demonstrated in the style of Crane's presentation. Whereas French, Brotherton and Douglas made their points by quoting from research papers, sometimes illustrating the results on screen using graphs or lists of references, Crane had his source texts on a table next to him. This was not apparently to enable him to quote directly from those texts, but rather so that he could pick one up and wave it in the air when he mentioned it. As Bartlett and Miller had already described when they mentioned the use of evocative videos with emotional appeal, Crane's presentation relied much on theatricality.

The final session was a discussion panel with all speakers, responding to questions from the floor. It lasted only half an hour, but even in that time things got a little heated. Many questioners seemed oblivious to the idea of a "question" and tended to use their time to address the hall, much to the consternation of the organisers and the increasing impatience of an excitable audience. But on the whole it was an excellent day, and the chance to hear the other side was a welcome additional benefit. I hope David Aaronovitch gets well soon.

Here's another view of the event:
http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-09-25T13:30:00.000+01:00

Top scientists and organisations come together to say: 'Teach evolution, not creationism!'
Depressing that this initiative is necessary, but there you go. I'm all for kids learning about creationism, but not in a science class, because creationism has no scientific content, nor any explanatory power. Creationism, like its younger sibling "intelligent design", belongs in a philosophy class, along with other speculative but unfalsifiable ideas.

Scientists demand tougher guidelines on teaching of creationism in schools | Education | The Guardian
Apparently this is necessary. Get people talking about evolution and creationism (and intelligent design), and why it matters that children aren't taught pseudoscience.

This horror cannot be unseen | Pharyngula
PZ wonders what exactly the evil atheists have been doing, that a rabbi should characterise atheism as "ugly".

Daylight Atheism > Never Quote Discworld to an Atheist
Don't treat people as things.

Why the Anti-Science Creationist Movement Is So Dangerous | Belief | AlterNet
Adam Lee explains why there is such an anti-science bias in US politics.

Psychic Sally Morgan hears voices from the other side (via a hidden earpiece) | Chris French | Science | guardian.co.uk
Chris French gives a reasoned and dispassionate assessment of the apparent facts.

Science fiction isn't just fantasy: it changes lives and can change Britain – Telegraph Blogs
Slightly provocative plea - but I'm in general agreement with this.

Coalition teacher training reforms 'too simplistic' - Telegraph
James Williams on training those at the chalkface. (James Williams was the guest on the latest Skepticule Extra podcast — to be released shortly.)

The magic of living in a bubble

2011-09-19T20:03:00.000+01:00

Here's a quote:

News presenter Jeremy Paxman, in a Newsnight programme, has recently referred to a large section of religious believers as ‘stupid' and religious creation narratives as ‘hogwash.' At many levels this is unacceptable behaviour for a BBC presenter, yet the BBC not only justifies it but allows him to get away with it!

Just who is getting so offended at this blatant anti-religious rant by a famous BBC anchor-man? You've probably guessed already: Creationists!

Although the context was an interview with Richard Dawkins about his new book, The Magic of Reality, Paxman also made categorical statements that the truthfulness of religious creation accounts cannot be taken seriously and should therefore be treated with utter disdain. His disrespect and lack of impartiality was self-evident despite later BBC attempts to justify it. A response from the BBC argued that he ‘was being provocative by playing devil's advocate.' But that isn't how it came across to anyone listening; it sounded very much like Paxman was expressing his own opinion as a statement of fact, not in the context of asking a question to Dawkins.

There's a reason why it sounded like Paxman was making a statement of fact. It's because he was, as it happens, stating a fact. Religious creation narratives are, on the whole, hogwash — meaning false, not true, non-congruent with reality. Dawkins charitably described them as myth, and expressed a fondness for Genesis, as myth. Listen for yourself:

http://youtu.be/N-TFIxW1d10

My copy of the book arrived this morning, and I only had time to glance briefly at it before leaving for work. The illustrations are amazing. I look forward to reading the whole thing as I'm apparently within Dawkins' target age-range (12 to 100).

But back to those hyper-sensitive creationists. See how they attempt to justify their position with oblique references to research and other non-biblical texts:

Christian creationists have always recognised the multi-levelled nature of the creation account, reading it both literally and with theological symbolism, and not just with the eyes of simplistic literalism. Creationists are also interested in mapping global creation and flood stories from around the world to see whether there is a common pattern. It would seem in fact that there is knowledge of a global flood in many of those accounts, and this is to be expected if the world population is related to Noah's family, just as the Bible says. Oxford Professor Peter Harrison has also argued recently that a literal reading of the Bible led to a more literal reading of nature, and this helped to get science going in a more meaningful way in the early modern period.

So the creation account is both literal and symbolic? How convenient, allowing them to push the symbolism when their literalism is challenged, and vice versa. Plus there's an appeal to authority — an "Oxford Professor" no less, who has argued. He may well have argued, but has anyone (apart from creationists) taken him seriously? We won't find out from this piece, as it provides no references.

In summary, I would suggest that the BBC hierarchy is out of touch with its viewers and has little interest in genuine respect and dialogue. Instead it appears to be living in a bubble of its own making.

The BBC likely considers creationists deserving of respect, just like anyone else, even if they believe nonsense. But the nonsense itself deserves none. And we can clearly see who's living in a bubble (hint: it's not the BBC).

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-09-18T23:30:00.000+01:00

The New Apostolic Reformation: The Evangelicals Engaged In Spiritual Warfare : NPR
This is what Liz Lutgendorff talks about on the latest Skepticule Extra podcast, episode 14. It's frightening. (Episode 15 was recorded this evening and will be posted in a few days.)

I Am An Atheist: 16 Things Atheists Need Christians to Know
Excellent list, succinctly enumerated.

Belief matters, and bad beliefs hurt us all | Pharyngula
Truth matters as well. I heard John Gray's piece (the essay against which PZ so vehemently fulminates) as A Point of View — a podcast of the BBC radio programme of the same name. The man sounds so reasonable with his calm, deliberate delivery, until you actually listen to what he's saying. Then you realise he's speaking from a different planet.

Whither now the Church of England? : Atheism UK
The CofE is squirming, wriggling, trying its best to untangle the moral knots it has woven for itself in an inexorably complex cat's cradle of obfuscation. Too bad, I say. The CofE is history — let it hang there and expire.

Science, Reason and Critical Thinking: Magical v. Rational Candles
The rational candles are great; I want a box of them. But I'm torn — the magical candles use one of my favourite woo-woo words: potentised.

Unbelievable punishment

2011-09-18T14:54:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I had more than one motive for ordering the DVD set of the Unbelievable? Conference. I've attended a number of events where talks were recorded — video as well as audio-only — and I've been struck by the variable quality of the results. I've watched countless talks on-line that I didn't personally attend, and given the variable quality of those too, I considered how difficult making such recordings might be. I've had the opportunity to test that myself over the past few months, by recording (with permission) most of the talks given at Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub. Four of these are now available as Skepticule Record episodes. One of them — the juggling and maths of Colin Wright — I recorded in video, but video is a far more demanding medium than audio only, and I have yet to get around to doing what's necessary to make that available.

I attended both TAM London 2009 and 2010, but only the first has been made available on DVD (which I have), and in the light of the above I was curious to see what sort of job Premier would make of recording their own conference. I was also interested to see and hear what Christian spokespersons say to their self-selecting audience on the matter of Christianity in Britain. I live in Britain but I'm not a Christian, and what I hear on Unbelievable? (and elsewhere) makes me concerned about religious influence in public life.

Unbelievable?: The Conference DVD 2011 consists of three discs, of which I've so far watched the first. The box, with the subtitle "Honest answers to Tough questions", lists the contributors but gives no information regarding duration (though I understand it's about ten hours), PAL/NTSC format or region coding. (I use a multi-region multi-format DVD player so this isn't a problem for me, but it could be an issue for some.)

Disc 1 (the only one I've watched so far) is the Apologetic Stream, with an introduction by Justin Brierley in the Big Brother chair (sorry, that's how it seemed to me — I haven't watched Big Brother for years, do they still have the chair?) followed by a keynote speech by John Lennox entitled "What are we apologising for?" in which he explains the common misconception about "apologetics" (and how it has nothing to do with apologising). He goes on to explain why apolegetics is necessary as a biblical imperative, and who should do it. He's an excellent speaker, and is talking here to an sympathetic audience, so his tacit assumptions about the truth of scripture are legitimate in such a context.

Lennox identifies two attacks from which Christianity needs defending — first the scientific argument espoused by Richard Dawkins and a "minority" of scientistic atheists, the "New Atheists" — and second the attack on the morality and ethics of scripture. He makes a good point about asking questions of people until they respond with questions of their own, and his anecdotes are amusing, but I'm wary of taking his anecdotes at face value given his misrepresentation of his debate with Dawkins.

Towards the end of his keynote address it seems to me Lennox shifts effortlessly into "preacher" mode, with what appears to be an evangelical strategy for countering fear by appeal to revelation.

John Lennox is also first up in the Apologetic Stream with "Has Science Buried God?" He begins by stating that most scientists of the past were believers. This isn't surprising, and doesn't support his case because almost everyone of the past would have been believers. He states that God is a person not a theory, and then attempts to knock down a straw man of an equation of God and Science. He also states that he's not a fan of Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), and that science itself arose out of the Christian worldview — but when science began, as I've pointed out above, the Christian worldview was pretty much the only one around.

Lennox claims the idea that science equals rationality is false, and "scientism" comes from a false concept of God. He posits the opposition of "God" on one hand and "mechanism" on the other as a false dichotomy. He then goes on to complain about Stephen Hawking's statement about gravity and creation from nothing — a complaint Lennox has apparently addressed in a whole book. I've yet to read Hawking's The Grand Design (it's on my Kindle), but I have suspicions that his poorly phrased statement may have been instigated by his literary publicist in an effort to court controversy (and book sales).

Richard Dawkins' argument about explanatory complexity (in The God Delusion) is then applied to the book itself. Lennox asks, what is the explanation for The God Delusion? It's Richard Dawkins, but Richard Dawkins is more complex than the book, so according to him he isn't an adequate explanation for his own book! This, frankly, is a fatuous argument. Dawkins isn't the ultimate explanation for his book, he's merely one level of a hierarchy of explanation. This matter of explanatory power is something I see throughout a whole spectrum of theistic attempts to explain things by appeal to God — from John Polkinghorne to Ray Comfort to, er... John Lennox. The way we attempt to explain things we don't currently understand is by appeal to things we do understand, and indeed John Lennox himself touches on this when he talks about reductionism. But any attempt to "explain" something by appeal to something that we don't understand is clearly not an explanation at all. (Incidentally this is exactly why "intelligent design" isn't science.)

Lennox next addresses the question, who created God? — claiming it's a trick question, because it assumes that God was created. But is he therefore claiming that the universe could not be uncreated? This argument (known as the Cosmological Argument) is, as we've seen before, an exercise in special pleading.

In the Q&A Lennox begins by writing down a whole series of questions from the audience and then proceeds to answer them en bloc. I found it heartening to hear him cite atheist scientists again and again — this shows that the Gnu Atheists are definitely making an impression, and that theists feel they are obliged to answer. To a question about determinism Lennox responds with the argument from morality, but in a typically shallow fashion that sneaks in the usual conflation of morality and absolute or objective morality. This, I feel, is where the battle lies.

There are also questions about the "multiverse", which leave me cold, as it's all unfalsifiable speculation and not an argument.

Next up in the Apologetic Stream is Jay Smith with "How do I respond to Islam?" Islam, apparently, is the greatest threat to Christianity today. Smith spends much time denigrating the Qur'an as full of incomplete, derivative stories — in contrast to the New Testament, which is "true". (The Old Testament is apparently not relevant to the modern world.) Smith's zealous delivery is fast and furious, reminding me of a fairground huckster or a salesman standing with a microphone in the back of a truck surrounded by dodgy consumables. He's preaching (to the converted, no doubt, here), and I can imagine what he's like at Speaker's Corner, where he's apparently a regular.

Time and again he compares the Qur'an to the New Testament, declaring one to be so much better than the other. He has an answer for everything, as he demonstrates in the Q&A, but he's so slick and so fast I can't help thinking that what he's saying is just too good to be true — just like a snake-oil salesman.

Finally in the Apologetic Stream we have David Robertson with "How do I make the case for faith?" beginning with a clip from BBC Newsnight, in which Jeremy Paxman interviews Russell Brand (the clip isn't actually on the DVD, but I noted the link displayed on the screen and watched it via iPlayer).

Robertson's talk is mainly about making Jesus available to people (such as Brand) who are seeking him, which would seem to restrict his evangelism to those who are already susceptible to a religious way of thinking. Naturally he mentions his book The Dawkins Letters, and makes the claim that Dawkins wrote The God Delusion not as a result of 9/11 but because he was expecting religion to be dead by the beginning of the 21st century. It's an interesting but (at least here) unsubstantiated claim.

Another claim Robertson makes is that atheism is on the decline, which I think is only supportable by cherry-picking the data — just this month there's a report that it's religion that's on the decline: "All in all, these data point to a society in which religion is increasingly in retreat and nominal."

This was a mammoth session and I was flagging a bit towards the end, but I've another two discs to go. Watch this space for more of my punishment.

Grill the world's foremost Christian apologist — Unbelievable?

2011-09-14T23:53:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? radio programme was a departure from its regular format — which usually aims to get "...Christians and non-believers talking to each other." In advance of William Lane Craig's visit to the UK in October Justin Brierley had him responding to questions sent in by listeners. Peter May, one of the organisers of the Reasonable Faith Tour, was also on the programme.

I wasn't expecting much from this, as the last time Craig was on Unbelievable? he took the opportunity to bad-mouth Richard Dawkins in an unforgivable manner.

But there were some good questions. I've only heard the show once, but here are some thoughts that occurred to me while listening:

When asked by Justin what he thought of Dawkins' refusal to debate him, Craig said Dawkins might be afraid of being humiliated — as he was in his debate with John Lennox. This seems to me a very odd interpretation of events. Dawkins gave up debating theists one-on-one after his encounter with Lennox because Lennox misrepresented the debate afterwards:

http://youtu.be/24vWUeMnXBg

Small wonder that Dawkins refuses to debate Craig, when Craig himself echoes Lennox in misrepresenting what actually happened. (The whole of Dawkins' talk is available here: http://youtu.be/xbza-UtseE0 — well worth watching.)

Concerning Polly Toynbee's withdrawal from debating with him, Craig suggested that atheists seem to have got together and agreed to boycott "this type of event". It seems more likely that they got together and agreed not to debate William Lane Craig, as they know he's not interested in dialogue, only point-scoring.

Then Craig answered some listener questions. After some preliminary exposition of the Kalām Cosmological Argument he attempted to rebut Justin Schieber's excellent point about temporal causality — that one can't really say anything about cause and effect when time doesn't exist — and in doing so produced a real howler. He resorted to "simultaneity", claiming that intentions can be simultaneous with actions and therefore not temporal. But "simultaneous" means "at the same time". In what way is simultaneity non-temporal?

Fine-tuning was next up, and as usual Craig, like other theists, simply takes fine-tuning as a given. But look at the size of the universe. No, really, look at its SIZE.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."¹

Intelligent life (that stuff the universe is supposedly fine-tuned to support) is as far as we know an infinitesimally insignificant part of the universe. One could characterise intelligent life as a "homeopathically tiny" concentration in the unfathomably vast cosmos. Statistically speaking, therefore, there is no intelligent life at all in the universe. How can the nominal non-existence of any such thing be described as the result of "fine tuning"?

A. C. Grayling's comment that he'd sooner debate the existence of leprechauns and fairies than the existence of God was described by Craig as "condescending". This is symptomatic of the false importance theists ascribe to their wacky beliefs. They complain they're not being taken seriously, yet cannot provide any reason why they should be. We have, of course, heard this before. During a debate in 2009 Richard Harries objected to Richard Dawkins' similar characterisation:

"You can't let Richard get away with that. That's a ridiculous remark. You cannot confuse the God of classical theism, which has animated the whole of western philosophy, with a leprechaun."²

But like Craig, Harries provided no sound reason not to.

Another question was about the moral argument for God, and as expected Craig trotted out his usual claim that it's logically impossible for God to be immoral because it's part of God's nature to be moral. But he merely asserts that this is so. The only justification for such an assertion is that God is defined to be moral. This isn't really a justification, it's nothing more than an arbitrary definition.

And this man is supposedly the world's foremost Christian apologist.

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy — the original radio scripts. London 1985, Pan Books.
Lord Richard Harries, during a debate at Wellington College, Crowthorne, on the motion "Atheism is the New Fundamentalism", November 2009.

Last Night of the Proms

2011-09-13T23:14:00.002+01:00

On Saturday I went to the Last Night of the Proms. I could review it for you — but why should I, when it has been so capably captured here?

http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/LondonLiz/2011/9/11/Last-Night-At-The-Proms

Presuppositional apologetics — why bother?

2011-09-11T20:07:00.000+01:00

Some of my readers may have endured what has become known as The Fourth Debate, in which the three Pauls of the Skepticule Extra podcast were subjected to the presuppositional apologetic argument of Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate. We released it, unedited, as an episode of the Skepticule Record, which is that part of Skepticule intended to archive live events.

I believe I can safely assert that the three Pauls are in agreement that The Fourth Debate was the final word on Presuppositional Apologetics as far as they, personally, are concerned. PA has been shown, increasingly and repetitively, not to work. It doesn't convince atheists, and it doesn't convince those theists (the majority) who claim to have evidence for the existence of God. It appears that PA is only considered valid by those who already hold to it. As an apologetic method, therefore, it's a dismal failure.

For some people, however, this isn't enough. Chris Bolt of the Choosing Hats blog and podcast ~~(though "podcast" is used loosely here, as I can't find an RSS feed that encloses the media files, and have had to download them manually)~~* has been commenting on the aforementioned episode of the Skepticule Record in obsessive and tedious detail. There are currently four editions of "Praxis Presup" covering The Fourth Debate — numbers 12, 13, 14 and 15. Two-and-a-half hours of commentary (including clips of the "debate" itself) is a lot, and might perhaps be worth it for a "debate" that ran for an hour and nine minutes, but Chris Bolt's commentary in these four editions of Praxis Presup covers only the first half-hour of our podcast. Apparently there's more commentary to come, but based on what's been released so far, I've no incentive to listen further. (An added disincentive is the appalling sound quality of Praxis Presup. I hope Chris Bolt's listeners don't think the podcast we released is of comparable sound quality to the clips he played.)

All of which leaves me with a nagging question: for whom is Praxis Presup intended? Certainly not atheists, who — if they bother to listen — will only be confirmed in their conviction that PA is nonsense. Evidential theists won't be convinced, as PA claims their approach is invalid. The only people who will agree with Chris Bolt's analysis will be presuppositionalists themselves — and why do they need this, if they are already convinced by PA?

It's a mystery.

*It's been brought to my attention (thanks Fergus!) that there is indeed a working podcast feed for Praxis Presup: http://www.choosinghats.com/category/podcasts/feed/

A funny thing happened on the way to the Royal Albert Hall

2011-09-11T19:50:00.001+01:00

It was yesterday, and actually I was already there, attempting to take pictures of the various flag sellers, when I was accosted by a gentleman brandishing what appeared to be a "Flip" video camera, who asked me if I'd like to take part in a "Vox Pop":

http://www.winkball.com/entries/MrWdBOWYKRvC/&t

So of course I said yes.

Blog-dearth excuses: Skepticule Extra

2011-09-11T16:26:00.000+01:00

My blogging schedule has gone to pot, that's clear. I kept up the one-post-per-day for over eight months, until other things (life, or something masquerading as such) impinged on my daily creative output. Here's an example — the Skepticule Extra podcast comes out every fortnight on average, and the most recently published show features an interview with Matt Flannagan of the MandM blog. He talks about the Euthyphro dilemma and Divine Command Theory:

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/09/skepextra-013-20110821.html

And there's other stuff. Enjoy.

(The next show, number 14, will be published any day now.)

Burnee links for Sunday

2011-09-04T11:30:00.000+01:00

Links all from RD.net, mostly circumventing the Times paywall:

The Wonder Years - The Times Leading Article - The Times - RichardDawkins.net
A leader sparked off by excerpts from Richard Dawkins' new book for children. (Note that a forthcoming episode of the Skepticule Extra podcast will be dealing with science education.)

[UPDATE - audio]Evolution? Children do Adam and Eve it - Richard Dawkins - The Times - Eureka - RichardDawkins.net
This is the Eureka article to which the the Times leader (linked above) refers.

Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All- —and What We Can Do About It - Sean Faircloth - Pitchstone Publishing - RichardDawkins.net
Alarming to note that a book like this is necessary in the officially secular US. How much more are such warnings needed in the UK, where state religion puts secularism at a disadvantage?

Leading bishop hits out at Dawkins for reducing ‘faith into ignorance’ - Ruth Gledhill, Religion correspondent - The Times - RichardDawkins.net
It's truly laughable that the quotes chosen are perfect examples of scientific impossibilities, and yet the bishop apparently thinks it insulting that Dawkins points them out to be so. But miracles by definition are occurrences that contradict science. Miracles, fairy tales — how is one supposed to tell the difference?

‘Children are indoctrinated. I want to open their minds' - Alexander Linklater - The Times - RichardDawkins.net
More in the Times: an interview about the new book for children.

17th October — Stephen Law vs William Lane Craig

2011-09-04T11:00:00.000+01:00

Polly Toynbee, president of the British Humanist Association, was due to debate William Lane Craig, to kick off his October tour of the UK. She pulled out once she realised what kind of thing a debate with Craig is, and philosopher Stephen Law has stepped in to take her place.

I had decided not to attend the debate, as I was getting pretty sick of Craig's debating style. He does these things not in an effort to explore the arguments, but to "win". We saw this with two recent debates, first with Lawrence Krauss, and then with Sam Harris. Both Krauss and Harris have interesting and original things to say about their particular areas of concern, cosmology and morality respectively. But Craig isn't concerned with learning from either of them. Perhaps though, Krauss and Harris learned something from Craig — but it would not have been anything about the evidence for God, or the moral necessity of God. They may, however, have learned how to score superficial debating points — not that either of them would have been interested in doing such a thing.

So I decided, as noted above, that I was done with Craig and his "Reasonable Faith Tour".

I have, however, reconsidered. Previously I decided not to attend a conversation between Sam Harris and Giles Fraser (regular readers will know how much Fraser irritates me), but later regretted my decision, because when I changed my mind I discovered all tickets were sold.

To forestall potentially similar regrets I do now have a ticket for the Craig vs Law debate at Westminster Central Hall at 7:30 pm on Monday 17th October. Partly this is because I'm currently reading Stephen Law's new book, Believing Bullshit, and partly because of all those put up against Craig on this tour and elsewhere, Stephen Law seems likely to be the most capable of tackling Craig on his own terms. Perusal of his blog indicates he's not taking the debate lightly (he is, at least, getting plenty of advice).

Naturally you can expect a full report.