On the matters of faiths, beliefs, sciences and worldviews.

Cornelius Hunter went on another diatribe a few days ago, this time whining about Jerry Coyne and his pitiful way of supporting the one theory actually backed by evidence and reason. Cornelius begins by explaining the the words lanugo and epistemology. He gets most of it right, which is only more odd seeing as he then goes right on to misapply them to a snippet of Jerry Coyne’s book, Why Evolution Is True.

Evolutionary thinking smashes through the IF-THEN log jam by instead using the IF-AND-ONLY-IF-THEN statement. Here’s an example: If and only if it is Friday, then evolutionists play poker. In this example, if we observe evolutionists playing poker then it must be Friday. There is no other possibility. Unlike the IF-THEN statement, the IF-AND-ONLY-IF-THEN statement allows you to establish truths.

Yes, Hunter’s hypothetical example is all well and true, but does it have anything to do with Coyne or the actual theory of evolution? No, not much.

The part of Coyne’s paragraph that Hunter really has a problem with is the following: “Lanugo can be explained only as a remnant of our primate ancestry“. There’s more, but seeing as Hunter doesn’t really care about the context of this statement anyway, then neither do I.

When you look at that statement, you might initially feel that, yes, that is an IF-AND-ONLY-IF-THEN statement. However, if you do, then you obviously don’t know much about the evolution/ID dichotomy. Intelligent Design is definitely a possible answer to the existence of life. It’s one of many. However, what it’s not is an explanation of where lanugo comes from, or why it exists. Actually, ID doesn’t say anything at all about where anything comes from, or why it exists. It just states that it was “designed” by “someone” (yeah, you try finding an IDist that actually uses the word something instead of someone), and leaves it at that. As evidence, they basically go “just look at that flower! You think it made itself?”, and think that settles it. So what if ID is the answer to the questions in nature, what does it tell us? What could knowing that do for us? What’s the practical application of knowing that “someone designed” that flower, or that Zebra, or that mountain?

I won’t claim to know exactly what Coyne meant, and to be quite honest, I haven’t even read his book yet (I’m going to, though). However, I’ve seen and heard enough of debates and statements of this kind to be quite certain that Coyne didn’t actually mean what Hunter tells us he meant. The key word in the quote Hunter uses is “explained”, and not “only”. Using Hunter’s own idea of the IF-AND-ONLY-IF-THEN statement, it would actually read as follows:

IF-AND-ONLY-IF a theory actually explains the existence of a phenomenon, THEN it is a valid explanation.

That means that should any ID advocate come up with a reasonable and evidence-supported theory that explains lanugo, then it too is a valid explanation. Simply stating that “someone” made lanugo happen isn’t an explanation, and it’s even more useless if you have no evidence to show for it.

Lastly, can someone please tell me what part of lanugo is supposed to be intelligently designed anyway? Anyone?

“Milo…please provide evidence that men mated like earthworms. Also, please explain why and how evolution changed the mating system, if things were humming along with that method. Thanks”

- Ray Comfort, Atheist Central

Lately, the internet has been a-buzz with the news that Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron – the bananic duo – plan to distribute special editions of Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. The actual text is left (I hope) untouched, but the book has been gifted with a special, 50-page foreword by Ray Comfort. In it, he attempts to slander Darwin’s person by attaching him to racism and nazism, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a CrocoDuck or two thrown in for good measure as well.

While they’re right in that the copyright of Darwin’s original text has long-since expired, this is a textbook example of what is popularly called “a dick move”. They don’t expect anyone to actually read the book, but they do hope that people will believe their ridiculous diatribes on “paintings and their painters” and the eternal love of their particular variant of an omnipotent Sky-Daddy (oh, and his zombie son as well).

Most of us realize how pathetic this all is. However, what most of us don’t realize is how great it is to emphasize this by satirizing it all with the help of two crabs in some sort of forest. Behold!

In the beginning, God created the world, all the animals, and ultimately a man and a woman, right? Whatever went through the minds of the only two people in existence at that time had to have been put there, explicitely, by God, right? I mean, unless someone else was involved in the whole creation thing. Ok, but one of the things that God put in the brain of Adam and Eve was the, now infamous, capability of free will. This meant that they were both able to make choices, either this or that, go left or go right. Remember, God put that ability into Adam and Eve himself. He hadn’t created himself as Jesus yet, so there’s really no one else to blame at this point.

This is where the fun stuff happens. Adam and Eve, using some of that splendidly glorious free will that God explicitly made sure to put into their heads, ate a single fruit off of a single tree, the one and only tree in the entire garden of Eden that God told them they couldn’t eat of. The ironic part is that this fruit came from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong. Yes, boys and girls, God told Adam and Even not to do something that he would think was bad, before they had the ability to tell bad from good, right from wrong. They also used their free will, something God probably put into their heads to be used, not ignored.

So what happened? Oh, we all know what happened, don’t we? God punished Adam and Eve for doing what they couldn’t possibly know not to do, since they couldn’t know that what they did was wrong and God himself made them capable of choosing whether to obey or disobey, thanks to free will. But he didn’t settle for punishing those that wronged him, nooo… He punished all of mankind, forever! Because, apparently, that’s a fair punishment when you’re God.

The ridiculousness of the Christian creation myth isn’t what bothers me the most. All old cultures and religions have their own explanations for things that they, at the time, couldn’t understand. What bothers me is how they ignore the complexities of choice, morality and free will. They think it’s all black and white because their book says it is. They think that automatic damnation for each and everyone is a fitting punishment for doing, well, what you were made to do. I don’t see how God can have created us, and therefor alone bear all responsibility for how we turn out, yet punish us for doing exactly what we were supposed to do.

God, infinitely omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent as he is, could have created the world without choice, without free will. Had he done that, we wouldn’t have disappointed him by making the “wrong” choice (which he already knew we would, omniscient as he is) and both of us would have been happier today. After all, we humans are only aware of the choices we know about, so we’re still blissfully ignorant of all the choices we never knew about. Imagine how blissful we would have been without the knowledge of any choice whatsoever!

Ok, I began this post with an actual point, and I’ll try to make before sending all of you to sleep. The mythical story of the vengeful God that punishes man for something he made us do is one thing, but the more modern apologetic interpretations of the implications of God’s actions in that myth are completely senseless. They go against all logic, reason and evidence, and is maintained purely for the sake of scripture and people’s own sense of satisfaction. People want the ability to choose, but want to blame God’s “mysterious ways” whenever something goes wrong. They want to have “absolute” morality, but still want to be saved from the inevitable punishment. It bothers me that they don’t understand how oxymoronic it all is, that they don’t even want to understand. Ignorance is one thing, and defensible, but willful ignorance is, in my opinion, unforgivable.

On Ray Comfort’s latest post, user Prestor John posted some really great gems that I sincerely hope he doesn’t mind if I re-post:

Believer: I can give you irrefutable scientific proof for the existence of God!

Skeptic: I’m listening.

Believer: First, if you will indulge me, a small preamble (Trust me, this argument is going to knock your socks off).

Skeptic: Go on.

Believer: Your house… do you believe that someone built it?

Skeptic: Well, I met the contractor, observed some of the construction process -

Believer: So you do believe there was a builder?

Skeptic: I don’t think “believe” is the right word…

Believer: Excellent! On to my next question; Your car… do you believe someone built that?

Skeptic: Ah, judging from the manufacturer’s information… Okay, I think I can see where this is going. With your ham-fisted Socratic Method you seem to be reaffirming Paley’s “watchmaker” design argument. I’m sure this was much more convincing two hundred years ago, but it hasn’t aged well.

Believer: Paley? No no no, you don’t understand. You see, in the same way that houses and cars have builders…

Skeptic: I understand perfectly. Homes have builders, paintings have painters, blogs have bloggers. All this succeeds to prove is that human artifacts are made by humans. I knew this already. If you wish to conclude that things that appear designed were designed by some other intelligence (namely God), then that is purely conjecture and does not constitute proof.

Believer: But a creation must have a creator! That is scientific proof of God’s existence!

Skeptic: Now you are just playing word games. The universe was only called a “creation” on the presupposition that God created it. You can’t use that fact as proof of God’s existence. You may as well rename the universe “God’s House”, and conclude that God must live there. It’s just semantics.

Believer: [pause] Why do you love sin so much?

Skeptic: [exasperation]

This is exactly how I perceive every single “creation proves a creator”-type argument. “Creation” is a word of one of the many human languages, not an objective property of the universe. Without the human mind existing, no one would be calling it a “creation” to begin with, and thus it wouldn’t be one. Therefore, “creation” only “proves a creator” under the circumstance that you’ve first proved that there is, in fact, a “creation”, to begin with. Since no one has ever managed to do that, this particular argument is immediately rendered moot.

This second one is just as good, hitting at exactly what I feel every time I speak with a True Christian™:

For your amusement, I have distilled a typical dialogue between opposing viewpoints:

Believer: Why do you doubt God?

Skeptic: I have no good reason to believe such a being exists.

Believer: But God is the creator of all that is good, he is the source of all righteousness!

Skeptic: That’s funny, because the way you have previously described him, he seems like kind of a jerk.

Believer: Well, it only seems that way to you because you have no concept of divine justice. God’s wrath is necessary punishment for our sins.

Skeptic: Justice? Your God creates a moral code so rigorous that no human can possibly follow it, then awards eternal condemnation for the slightest infractions. Sounds more like despotism to me.

Believer: Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. For you see, God will commute your sentence if you only believe and follow Him.

Skeptic: So God disregards justice in favor of the abject devotion of his subjects? I would call that corrupt.

Believer: What? No, well… Hey, if you don’t believe God exists, why should you care about what kind of God he is? Aha! Now I’ve gotcha!

Skeptic: I could make the same observations about Emperor Palpatine, but I don’t see millions of people devoted to worshipping him. There’s nothing inconsistent about a hypothetical judgement of a fictional character.

Believer: Right… Well look man, you better cast aside your pride and put your trust in Jesus. Otherwise death and unending torture await you!

Skeptic: [sigh]

Sigh, indeed. Circular and/or fallacious reasoning won’t work with us, no matter how many times you repeat it. If Christians understood this, that would be a great first step towards further enlightenment and understanding. Unfortunately for us, True Christians™ aren’t interested in enlightenment, nor understanding. They are blissfully ignorant by choice.

On that note, I’ll end this post with another quote, but not from Prestor John this time…

You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

- Author Unknown