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

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

Via Uncommon Descent, I get to a blog called “Darwin’s God: How Religion Drives Science and Why it Matters“. Here, Dr. Cornelius Hunter argues that evolutionists live in constant denial about the religious nature of the theory of evolution. “The metaphysics embedded in their thought is exceeded only by their denial of it. It is a truly fascinating mythology” he writes.

Ok, so the fact that Dr. Hunter would make this argument is somewhat spoiled for us right in the very title of the site. It is also not a very new argument, ID/creationism proponents have been claiming this for years. But why do they think so? What is it about evolution that makes it seem like it is religious in nature?

The reason given by evolutionists such as Myers for why their theological proclamations don’t count is that “evolution provides an explanation for” the imperfections.

It’s true, evolution does provide an explanation for the imperfections in nature. Dr. Hunter quotes (his emphasis) PZ Myers as writing

the interesting part about imperfections like the recurrent laryngeal nerve or the spine of bipeds or mammalian testicles isn’t simply that they seem clumsy and broken in a way no sensible god would tolerate, but that evolution provides an explanation for why they are so.

Not only does the theory of evolution predict beforehand what kind of evidence we should expect to find – and do find – but it also fits the evidence we already have found of common descent with modification. However, this isn’t enough for Dr. Hunter, because it doesn’t fit his worldview. They theory of evolution is incorrect not because it isn’t supported by evidence, but because it is incompatible with his pre-existent opinion of what the evidence is supposed to be.

Third, the notion that “evolution provides an explanation” is absurd. That’s like saying bed-time stories provide an explanation.

The only one’s who are religious in their methodology and conclusions are the creationists and the IDists, because they are the only ones to have reached their conclusions before seeing the evidence. This is shown by their continued insistence to try and prove their case to all of science as well as dismissing all the evidence that doesn’t fit their own ideas, while the real scientists study the evidence, form their theories and then spend a lot of their time trying to disprove their own conclusions. This is the base of the peer review system where you submit your theories not so that others can praise you for how right you are, but so that they can tell you precisely why you’re wrong. Naturally, not being interested in being proven wrong, creationists and IDists mostly reject this system, preferring to pat each other’s backs when one of them finds some perceived flaw in some small part of the theory of evolution.

Dr. Hunter’s problem, I believe, is that he himself is probably religious, and he therefor can’t conceive of a person coming to conclusions that aren’t grounded firmly in religious dogma and beliefs. Because he already believes one thing to be true, he must automatically reject everything else, regardless of the evidence in favor of it. The easiest excuse for someone like that is, of course, to deny one’s own problem and instead pin it on the other person. This is why he makes the illogical and unreasonable accusation that we are the one’s who are religious, and that he is one who’s simply following the evidence.

I just wonder how it is that a theory that is completely false and untrue can continue to produce cures for diseases, better crops and live stock and be supported by so many and so large bodies of evidence, while a theory like Intelligent Design, that is so obviously true, can consistently fail to produce anything at all, least of all evidence in favor of itself. No wonder then that they have to resort to vast conspiracy theories to explain away their own failures.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke

One thing I’ve always wondered is why Christians will often argue that mere human wisdom will get us nowhere, that science can’t discover God because he dwells outside the natural realm. Yet these Christians claim to know all sorts of things about God for sure, simply by instinct. How is it that God is natural enough to directly manipulate his followers’ brains into knowing intimate details concerning his methods, goals and wishes, yet he is at the same time completely and utterly undetectable by any kind of human means, even though we should at least be able to measure the changing brain waves of someone being affected by God. It simply makes no sense, unless the point really is to convey the illusion of knowledge about the ultimately unknowable.

For example, Christians like Ray Comfort will argue that complex design is proof that there is an intelligent designer, because they cannot imagine any way for these designs to form naturally. One of Ray’s favorite lines is that atheists believe “nothing created everything” (which, according to him, is “intellectually embarrassing”), and that by taking God out of the equation we’re left dealing with the fact that the chicken spontaneously chose to lay an egg one day, without anyone or anything “designing” that egg in the first place. It is of course the most horrible of straw men, neither atheists nor scientists believe any such thing. However, they will also refuse to take their own logic and reasoning that one small step further. If the argument is that nothing complex could arise without intelligent design, then the intelligent design that creates these complexities will also, in turn, be complex enough to warrant a creator of its own. This leads to an infinite regress, and neither solves any problems nor answers any questions.

In essence, when Ray tells me that I believe “nothing created everything”, he is also telling me that he believes that “nothing created God, which then created everything” whether he likes it or not. Yet pointing this out will render nothing but silence, or a change of subject, as response. He must, for his own faith’s sake, ignore any further reasoning along those very lines, lest he end up realizing that God is impossible.

If you want to watch real intellectual embarrassment in action, look no further than to Ray Comfort, the very master of digging one’s own grave.

I learned something new today. Apparently, because I have a hard time accepting proposition without evidence as truth, I am to be considered “mentally ill”. That’s right, according to user bwinwright on AllVoices.com, all those attention seeking atheists out there are clinically insane, and deliberately trolling and taunting them is, I quote:

[...] like throwing holy water on Satan. It’s fun!

Apparently, this isn’t even really about God per se, but rather the fact that “intelligent direction” is absolutely evident and mandatory at all times, in all cases. The atheists refusal to agree with this is, naturally, enough to declare us “mentally ill”.

Now, admittedly I’m not a psychiatrist, but then again I’m pretty sure bwinwright isn’t one either, so we’re pretty much on equal grounds here. I think he has just as much credential to diagnose anyone as I do, that is none whatsoever. Remembering this, it’s very hard to take him seriously.

Further, according to him, “the one thing I do know is that ORDER REQUIRES INTELLIGENT DIRECTION. It is really nothing more than common sense” (his emphasis). So then I suppose it is totally acceptable to scrap all the scheduled space flights, cancel all the regular flights and put all the boats on dry land. You know, because common sense dictates that only birds can fly, nothing can live in space and heavy boats made out of metal should sink like stones. This is the kind of common sense that he wants us to live by. Unquestioning, wilfully ignorant common sense.

Unlike bwinwright, I like to question things, even that which is considered common sense. If people hadn’t questioned that, we wouldn’t have planes, boats and space rockets today. We would be stuck in our caves or mud huts, amazed at the gathering storm but utterly convinced by common sense that nothing could make fire except lightning striking the earth. In reality, even bwinwright questions a lot of things that are common sense. Just not the one thing that we have tons and tons of evidence against. He’s convinced that this one thing, this intelligent director, simply has to exist no matter what. It won’t matter to him how much evidence we give for purely natural phenomena, it won’t matter how many things we are able to explain in detail. He is utterly attached to, and dependent on, the idea of a “higher power” in the form of a theistic deity that directs and produces everything in existence. Despite all common sense, he believes this being actually exists.

I’m left to wonder which one of us fits the description of “mentally ill” best. Certainly, believing that something exists that you’ve never seen, heard, touched or smelled, that no instrument could ever measure or probe, that no other natural element is ever effected by and that is not even strictly necessary to explain anything anymore could be considered delusional, something which is very much a sign of actual mental illness. But then again, I’m not a psychiatrist, so that diagnosis isn’t mine to make.