Atheism – Page 7 – St. Eutychus

Alpha bet ends

The Guardian’s atheist journalist who attended Alpha has finished. His experience makes for fascinating reading. It’s honest. Critical. And engaging.

He ends up deciding that atheists are far better off hanging out with Christians than yelling at them. Which is refreshing. And has some great insights into the good, the bad, and the ugly of evangelism.

Check it out.

He’s also got an insightful interview with the head of the Alpha movement, Nicky Gumbel, about all sorts of things to do with the course. It’s worth a read.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard of Alpha (I haven’t done it) is its focus on tongues – here’s what Gumbel says…

“Yes, I think it’s one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It’s not the only gift and it’s not right at the heart of the New Testament, but it is there, and I think we don’t give it much more emphasis than the New Testament gives it, which is not very much. If you came to our weekend and heard it I don’t think you would feel this is something that is weird.”

Interesting. He has a longer treatise on tongues that is also pretty on the money. I won’t reproduce it all here.

My favourite quote in the whole Alpha Male series was this one – describing the low point of the experience for journalist, Adam Rutherford:

“The low point followed, when Barbara, with whom I had had fun, explained that following my sturdy but polite defence of science and attack on healing (the most galling session), she became convinced that with regards to the supernatural, there was “something rather than nothing”. I had managed to reinforce her latent suspicion of science towards a more faithful position. Christ alive, how disappointing is that? She is thoughtful and intelligent. She listened and argued with me, and chose an emotional and visceral position instead. As I do this for a living, I will certainly modify my rhetoric as a result.”

Yeah. Cop that atheists who think being smug is the way to change minds.

October 2, 2009

Ten of their best

Here are my ten favourite assumptions, insults, and accusations thrown at me by PZ Myer’s angry horde.

That I chose to use the word “seem” in the title because I don’t think atheists are capable of being nice.
That the “curiosities” column creates revenue for me/is advertising and I wrote this post in order to receive the attention I did.
That I would censor comments, or that I was doing so, because I was scared of criticism.
That I would hatch a conspiracy theory regarding my site’s demise and blame atheist hackers.
That no Christian has ever read anything about the formation of the Bible or church history and that we are completely unaware of criticism of that process.
That noise = victory and silence = an admission of defeat.
That if God exists human morality should still trump morality as ordained by God.
That just because they’ve given a name to a school of thought… and their philosophical leaders have rebutted it… everyone should fall into line and stop using arguments they disagree with.
That no Christian knows how to use the Old Testament, or deal with difficult philosophical positions created by a God society does not agree with.
That atheist scholarship regarding the Bible and Christianity is more objective than Christian or independent scholarship.

October 1, 2009

A comic you can believe in

The question now – should I duck for cover? Wouldn’t want to go saying anything that the people binarily opposed to me from a philosophical standpoint may find offensive now would I…

From here.

September 30, 2009

On angry mobs

I love how in online debates people think volume equals victory.

Somehow the fact that 200 angry commenters at the world’s biggest atheist blog all disagreed with me makes them correct.

And atheists are the first to suggest that majority rule does not make a position automatically correct. When it suits them of course.

This tactic is up there with giving a phenomena a name (eg “Godwin’s Law”) and thus making the use of long held positions and ideas somehow laughable. It’s name it and shame it rather than name it and claim it. It’s odd. Similarly, having some sort of well known theory like Pascal’s Wager “debunked” by people who disagree with it… I’m glad atheists have rebuttals for every position put forward by Christians. It probably helps them to sleep at night. The issue really rests on that which separates theists from atheists… if theists are correct then every rebuttal atheists make on the basis of “logic” or “science” will be shown to be incorrect, and vice versa.

This is the problem I was trying to address in my list also… the question of whether God exists divides down the line of people who think everything came from nothing and the people who think that everything came from God. Either the universe came first, or God did. That’s the complexity I was referring to in my list. While some atheist philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to chance – other philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to the idea of a watchmaker.

Just because you’ve made up your mind on that issue doesn’t make the other answer any less rational. It’s probably more rational – because the simplest answer is to assume a creator, not the other way around.

September 30, 2009

On science

I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m approaching 200 comments from atheists who are pretty angry at my list from the other day. I’ve got to say that if I knew I was going to get this sort of attention I would have at least proof read my list and fixed up a couple of grammatical errors. I probably would have made my position on science a little clearer too…

So let me do that here.

I think science is terrific. I think the scientific method is the best way to understand the way the world works. I think science is fascinating – much more than I did when I was studying physics and chemistry in high school. I am not, as many of my lovely commenters pointed out, a scientist.

I appreciate the benefits of science – like medicine and technology.

I love that we can understand the way the world works, and visit the moon.

I think it’s great that we have a picture of the amazing world that we live in thanks to science.

My point about science was not that it’s a bad thing – nor was it a comment on problems with the scientific method.

I was simply suggesting that the scientific method is open to abuse. By people with agendas. The same accusations atheists throw at “creation scientists” can be turned around and thrown at atheists who try to use science to attack religious belief.

Science is grand. Christians (and other theists) like science because it helps us to understand the world God has made.

Just because we understand things like gravity does not mean that there is no God causing gravity to occur. Some Christians distrust science. That’s not the point I was making – although I think the agenda behind science is worth looking at. Which was my point. When a rabid atheist conducts “science” they’re just as likely to come up with findings that support their position as a scientist working for big tobacco.

It’s interesting how many of the atheists hanging out at possibly the world’s most vindictive atheist blog have some background in church – and deep anger at Christianity – I can’t for a second believe that this anger isn’t motivating their scientific approach.

One commenter, either here or at the post on pharyngula, made the comment that the earth is a 1 in 1000000000 possibility, and made this comment as though that is proof that there is no God. Most theists would see the probability dramatically improving with God in the picture.

The theory that an infinite amount of time and space will eventually and inevitably produce life as we know it is odd, and unconvincing. Surely the same amount of time and space would also eventually create the specific God mentioned in the Bible – an omnipotent, omnipresent creator God.

I don’t want to go down the path of discussing the anthropic principle (the idea that conditions in the universe are just right for life which lends itself to the notion of a creator) – but I do wonder how atheists (and I’m hoping a few of you are still floating around) explain our existence in a way that doesn’t involve a sidestep (ie why are we asking “why” it’s the wrong question).

Also, I have said plenty of other stuff about atheism in the past that you newbies might like to read.

September 30, 2009

New beginnings

Right, well, I have a new host. Hightek Hosting were great – they just seemed not really to know how to handle WordPress.

PZ Myers’ rebuttal of my five tips for atheists got me 4,000 hits (so far) – and about 60 comments – feel free to join the fun. Here, or there.

September 28, 2009

PZ Myers killed my blog

So, Christians have been pretty guilty of wrongly accusing atheists of doing bad stuff before – but the prominent atheist PZ Meyers wrote a rebuttal to yesterday’s post, linked to it, and I was flooded with angry commenters.

I’m trying to keep up with moderating the comments (most of which seem to assume I’m an American writing for an American audience).

I’m getting there – but the traffic and comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back with regards to my webhosts, so I’m currently moving.

I’ll flick the switch soon. In the meantime – try to hold off on commenting because new comments and stuff won’t come through.

See you soon.

September 28, 2009

Five things that would make atheists seem nicer

I am trying really hard to cut down on generalising and bagging out “atheists” rather than specific people and streams of atheism.

They’re not all the same – and they aren’t all out to eat your babies. But atheists (general) keep giving me reason to think bad thoughts about them. Like the two who hijack this thread on Communicate Jesus.

Here are five tips for my atheist friends to help them seem nicer and more reasonable.

Stop being so smug.
Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.
Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.
Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.
Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

September 27, 2009

Schaeffer on Fundamentalism

I haven’t watched this yet – but I read the transcript posted on the Friendly Atheist.

Frank Schaeffer is a little bit angry at some of the good parts of “fundamentalism” – and yes, there are good parts of seeing something as objective truth and fighting for it. He is a former “fundamentalist” and the son of Francis Schaeffer.

But when there’s a relatively large population of your country who are using the Bible to justify the belief that their president is the anti-Christ, while ignoring the other things the Bible has to say about governments (eg Romans 13), and the anti-Christ (1 John 2), someone needs to call it for what it is. Stupid shenanigans. And that’s what Schaeffer does.

“The mainstream not just media but culture doesn’t sufficiently take stock of the fact that within our culture we have a sub-culture, which is literally a fifth column of insanity, that is bred from birth through home-school, Christian school, evangelical college, whatever, to reject facts as a matter of faith.”

“Look, a village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot. It’s as simple as that, and we have to understand: we have a village idiot in this country. It’s called fundamentalist Christianity.”

One of the problems I have with the way Christianity is viewed comes from the fact that atheists hold up the relative strawmen of the fundamentalist fringe, and the actions of the nominal Christians without actually engaging with what Christianity (through the Bible) teaches.

September 18, 2009

What’s in the box

This guy sounds nice, but he’s pretty silly.

The biggest problem with this whole argument is that Christians don’t believe God is out there needing to be defined, we believe he revealed himself to us by his presence, his son, and his word.

His whole argument against theism is fallacious.

His conclusion about how Christians should act is on the money though.

September 17, 2009

Why Hitler is actually a problem for atheists

Atheists rightly get angry when Christians make arguments about “morality” on the basis that Hitler was an atheist (by most accounts). It’s a stupid argument by an extreme and is the equivalent of people arguing that Christianity causes war on the basis of the Crusades.

No, Hitler is not a problem when it comes to atheists being able to act morally – but he is a problem for atheists when it comes to the question of evil.

I don’t know if this is true for all atheists. It’s probably not. But the ones I talk to, who are pretty smart, and cover a spectrum of “moral” approaches to life, are pretty consistent on the question of the existence of evil. They say there’s no such thing.

I asked them, out of curiousity, to define evil.

Here’s a mix of responses I got…

I find evil is a helpful word to describe abhorrent things. "Evil" is not a noun, it’s an adjective. What does exist is broken people and randomness… I don’t like it when Kevin Rudd uses it to describe something. My immediate reaction is negative because it makes me think of spiritual absolutes which I really just see as a lazy guide to morality. When I use the word "evil", I would use it with the knowledge of the religious overtones to give the word more impact.

It’s much better to view the world is terms of Harmful/Not Harmful.

Was Hitler harmful, yes.

Is homosexuality harmful, no.

That’s more meaningful than:

Was Hitler evil, yes.

Is homosexuality evil, yes.

Is abortion harmful? Yeah, I guess, but then is not-abortion even more harmful? I think so. Talking in terms like that is a lot more helpful than absolute evil.

And another response:

Evil is just a lazy shorthand way of simplifying things. Evil exists in stories not in reality. I also think it’s harmful as an idea. Let’s go Nazi’s since it seems appropriate. Humanising a Nazi or Hitler is something that will get the public up in arms. But all "evils" are perpetrated by people not by some strange creatures of darkness and we can’t ignore this. To understand them is not to excuse actions but it can inform how these things happen. The Nazi’s, paedophiles, murderers, dance music producers, etc are just people.

And another…

I think the word "evil" creates more problems than solves it. I suggest a movement toward more specific terms, like "malicious", or "malevolent", or "unfortunate", depending on context and circumstance.

It seems there are a few of problems these guys have with the label. It’s got theological, and semantic baggage that make it unappealing – but in this discussion there’s also a question of relativity.

I personally find comfort in operating in a binary world of good and evil. I think it explains lots of things. I think Christianity provides a framework for understanding this binary that atheism doesn’t.

I think atheism is at its weakest when it tries to address evil, or bad, behaviour and explains away the purposeful actions of malevolent dictators as “insanity”, or the acts of the crazy. It’s more than that. There’s rationalised intent involved.

Reading any atheists (not just these specific friends of mine) trying to define how they decide if a behaviour is “positive” or “negative” is like watching someone trying to nail jelly to a wall.

There is no atheist apologetic for evil that sounds even remotely convincing to someone who believes in “good” and “evil” as absolutes. Which is a shame for the atheist – because all of our popular entertainment perpetuates the idea of such an absolute. Actually, it seems that the exceptions to that rule are the truly exceptional and intelligent, more nuanced, shows like the West Wing, The Wire and The Sopranos.

Good and evil come in degrees – and particular actions are nuanced by context. Shooting someone and killing them is not always evil. Similarly to these atheists I would support a harm v benefit process when deciding whether or not to shoot a dictator. But murder (defined as unjustifiable killing) is always evil, or bad. It doesn’t matter what rationalisation the perpetrator uses as a justification. If it’s truly justifiable then it’s not murder.

The Bible has a fair bit to say about evil, and about sin – and I think it’s where the Bible intersects the best with the human experience, along with the evidence of careful design in creation. I also think it’s the point where atheism is at its weakest when it comes to alternative explanations for why things are the way they are.

What do you reckon?

Update: one of my atheists pointed out that I haven’t really made a clear point about why I think atheism struggles with Hitler/evil.

Here’s my argument…

Most of atheism’s arguments from a scientific standpoint make sense if you remove the idea of God from the picture. You can observe most of the things atheists observe. And come to a conclusion ultimately based on how you think things came to be…

When it comes to giving any rationale about why people behave in evil ways – you’ve either got a compelling and consistent theological picture (evil is the result of rejecting God’s rule) or you’ve got the atheist’s answer – “some people do stuff that other people don’t like.”

September 8, 2009

YouTube Twosday: Ricky Gervais on Christianity

Anyone who checked out the iMonk’s post on atheism may have seen this already… but this is the “new” new atheism. Not rabid, but friendly. Not insulting, but funny. Not arrogant, but “humble”, not scientific, but cultural…

How do you counter these arguments of religion as a positive form of social control that isn’t necessary for “enlightened” people?

I’d suggest it’s not like the Pyromaniac Centuri0n would have us do it… he suggests, in a series of posts, that we move away from apologetics, and just preach the gospel – both the iMonk and Frank Turk (Centuri0n) suggest the likes of William Lane Craig have the approach wrong – and we should either be cultural or biblical – not philosophical.

Me, being a pragmatist, I think we need to have a balance of all three. You can’t use the Bible on people who reject the fundamental premise of a book authored by God. Especially if they insist on deduction rather than induction. So you need to take the philosophical apologetic when arguing for the existence of God. And you can’t do any of this without getting the cultural element right – and I’d say one of the big issues there is the damage done to our reputation by nominal or apathetic Christians. So don’t be one of those.

September 1, 2009

New strategy for the new atheism

The iMonk puts forward a little insight into how the goalposts are moving when it comes to discourse with atheists. I tend to agree with his diagnosis of the problem.

Some great insights.

“One of my letters this week stated that a 17 year old raised in an evangelical family was now an avid atheist, with many of the hijinks of evangelicalism as evidence of manipulation and control. He couldn’t mean take off your shoes and spin your socks over your head while singing “Jesus mess me up?” Why would that bother anyone?”

“You see, evangelicals have made such outrageous assumptions and promises about happiness, healing, everything working out, knowing God, answered prayer, loving one another and so on that proving us to be liars isn’t even a real job. It’s just a matter of tuning in to an increasing number of voices who say “It’s OK to not believe. Give yourself a break. Stop tormenting yourself trying to believe. Stop propping up your belief with more and more complex arguments. Just let go of God.”

“Keller is still great. C.S.Lewis is still helpful. [William Lane] Craig is still impressive. But I’m not sure their arguments are on the right channel. Vast numbers of people aren’t asking for philosophy. They are asking what will let them live a life uncomplicated by lies, manipulation and constant calls to prefer ignorance to what seems obvious.

What we’ve said and written is fine. What we’ve lived in our homes, private lives, churches, workplaces and friendships has spoken louder.

We are the ones who appear to not believe in the God we say is real. We are the ones who seem to be forcing ourselves to believe with bigger shows, bigger celebrities and bigger methods of manipulation.”

August 30, 2009

Strobel light

I was so intrigued by Lee Strobel’s approach to talking to atheists at the Friendly Atheist, and so annoyed by a Facebook friend’s recent somewhat ill thought out Answers in Genesis inspired attack on the morality of atheists, that I decided to ask my atheist friends for advice on how they’d like to be talked to.

Christians, by nature of their belief in God, have an imperative to share the gospel with their atheist friends, and in fact any non-Christian friends. It would be unloving not to. Atheists have a low tolerance for evangelism – but they do tolerate it when they understand the motivation. Or so I have found, and generalised. The problem for atheists is that once you reject the notion of God any further assumptions about how God might or might act move further and further away from that point of distinction. For the Christian it is perfectly rational, because we believe in God, to then believe that he would intervene in things, provide the mechanism for a relationship and raise the dead. We work deductively from that point. The atheist would prefer to work inductively (it seems) from the point of something miraculous (other than our miraculously balanced continued existence) like a visible miracle or visible, physical, answered prayer.

That’s a rather long preamble. I asked my friends, who I will identify by their online nom de plumes (except for Benny) some questions. While there are some obvious problems with some of their answers from a Christian perspective, they answered honestly and gave a pretty good representation of a cross section of atheist thoughts on the matter.

What should the church do better, in your opinions, if it wants to grow?

Benny

Push its community spirit more. I think people today would appreciate being part of a social group as much as learning their chosen religion. I think the non-church opinion of churches is that they are becoming less of benefit to the community and more benefit to members and the religion. ie, there is a divide opening.

Mr Paroxysm

That’s an odd question for an atheist/agnostic to answer as they wouldn’t want the church to grow. I think Ben covered this though. The good churches do is with community building and support systems. I think it is important however to keep the religious aspect separate from support groups/charity they provide and instead let people naturally discover those aspects if they wish. The Salvation Army does this extremely well.

What arguments from Christians do you have the most problems addressing?

Mr Paroxysm
I don’t really find any subject difficult to address. I suppose when the Christian uses "read the bible" as some kind of proof then you fall into an argument about the legitimacy of the bible and considering all the different theories on it’s authorship, differences in translation, included and omitted texts most of which can not be historically proven from either side and likely never will be (with exception to translation issue, the original text isn’t an issue for debate as far as I’ve ever seen just the different translations can be confounding)

Mr Snuffle

Problem is I don’t find any of it convincing, and when you start getting into prayer/resurrection it all just sounds ridiculous. If you want to understand the way I think about what you say, simply replace the words "Christian God" with "Santa", and then ask yourself which part of the argument you find the most compelling.

I think the meat of the argument you make is the argument for a god, any god. Or the likelihood of God as a starting point.

Assuming for a moment that Christianity is true, how should Christians do better at not annoying non-believers and people from other religions?

Benny

Who knows. Toning down the righteousness would be a good start. I think non-Christians are sick of having their views thwarted/not taken seriously because apparently they are morally and ideologically inferior.

Mr Paroxysm

Well your first point is something that I think encapsulates what I was going to say. Christianity is true… for you. What Christians need to recognise is that their religion is a personal truth and all other religions are as personally true for other people. Obviously for themselves Christianity it "True" but they need to recognise that they do not lay claim to any more evidence of truth than any other religion. You have faith that your religion is true but so does everyone else. The difference is with the Atheist who sees equality amongst all religions but has no faith in the evidence presented by any.
Christians (as with any other religion) can not expect their personal truth to be impactful to anyone not adhering to their dogma.

August 27, 2009

Google has all the answers

The Friendly Atheist thought it was pretty funny that Google says mean things about some Christian leaders when you type their names and “is” using Google’s predictive search thing.

I ran the test. I came up with some interesting results.

Here they are.

Google gets this one right…

August 21, 2009