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Thank you for allowing me to present at the 46th Annual Humanist Convention. It’s certainly a great pleasure to be here.

I call myself a naturalist, who, like secular humanists, most other naturalists, and many atheists, share a common belief in the dignity of people to live self-determined and fulfilled lives, unencumbered by repressive superstitious traditions. All ideologies – both religious and political – should be open to criticism and, potentially, open to rejection. And, ultimately, I see a free secular society, especially with a strong publicly-funded non-religious education system, as being fundamental to achieving the humanist vision.

Humanist Scorecard

Let’s have a look at the humanist scorecard around the world. Some events can give us hope.  Three recent examples come to mind. Firstly, ordinary citizens throughout the Middle East and North Africa are risking their lives to challenge the authority of their brutal, repressive, and often theocratic, regimes. These are essentially secular – not religious – movements of all age groups, especially younger ones, who seem to be, ironically, inspired or energised by being part of the ‘Facebook’ generation, the social networking of the Internet. I say ‘ironical’ as the Internet exemplifies today’s post-modernist ethos often portrayed at odds with the universal values of humanism; a theme I’d like to return to shortly.

Secondly, Nigeria has a notorious history of sectarian and tribal violence between the Islamic north and the Christian south. Both religious groups have sought to dominate, convert, and kill one another. However Nigerians have just conducted peaceful and fair elections under international monitoring where, again, ordinary Nigerians queued for hours to express self-determination at the ballot-boxes. Many even stayed at those polling centres to ensure their votes were counted legitimately. Unfortunately there is a sad postscript to this story. That peace ended with riots in northern Nigeria after the election of southern Christian, Goodluck Jonathan. 200 people were killed as a result. Umar Marigar of the Red Cross told the BBC that “The violent protests turn from political into ethno-religious crisis. As such, people might like to engage in retaliatory attacks. This is what we are always afraid of.”[1]

And, thirdly, praise them or condemn them. Wikileaks and Julian Assange, and other whistle-blowers valuably expose the often self-righteous secrecy of governments and organisations, as they try to implement anti-humanist values and actions in the name of the ‘greater-good’. I’m sure you are familiar with many examples – US and its allies secretly rendering detained suspects between countries to avoid legal restrictions on interrogations; the Roman Catholic Church covering up extensive child abuse by its office bearers; and, of course, extensive lying over the search for Iraq’s famous, and necessarily illusive, weapons of mass destruction. Truth, as always, is the first casualty with people being its actual victims. Whistle-blowers are one way, though perhaps not the best, of monitoring these organisations.

So, despite some positive stories, there is much work to be done by humanists. Conservative US state legislators are enacting laws to effectively restrict abortions, undermining the ‘Row v Wade’ (1973) Supreme Court decision.

Some states are making it exponentially more difficult, both financially and psychologically, for a woman to have an abortion. In South Dakota, a woman now has to wait at least 72 hours after seeking an abortion to have the actual procedure and is legally required to obtain counselling from a “crisis pregnancy center” — which are unregulated by the state and have the explicit goal of talking women out of abortions — before having the procedure.[2]

Just recently the Republicans attempted to cut US Federal funding for family planning programs as part of their rejection of budget funding. Ultimately President Obama held his ground on such a move. So conservative forces will use every opportunity to undermine or remove society’s humanist policies that conflict with their own particular sets of values. Humanists need to be vigilant in protecting and extending humanist values embedded in our secular society.

In Pakistan, five out of six men charged over the group rape of Mukhtaran Mai in 2002 were released by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. The sixth man was convicted and sentenced to death, later commuted to jail time. The rape was ordered by village elders after Mai’s brother was accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.  Mai claimed that 14 men were actually involved. As the Guardian reports (21 Apr 2011):

The supreme court was heavily criticised by human rights groups for the verdict, which they said put the safety of all Pakistani women at risk. Rape, “honour killings” and other crimes against women in Pakistan are routinely poorly investigated by police and go unpunished by the courts.[3]

Finally, I’m sure you are all familiar with various attempts to introduce Sharia law for Muslims living within secular societies. The fear is that our emphasis on cultural pluralism offers an opening for Sharia law, even in limited ways, and thereby compromise hard-won human freedoms. According to Civitas (Institute for the Study of Civil Society in the UK), there are 85 Sharia courts operating in Britain, of which 12 operate within the British legal system. In the report “Sharia Law or ‘One Law For All?”’[4], Civitas expressed three concerns: (1) voluntary arbitration seems impossible with the community intimidation of women; (2) Sharia law does not treat women equally; and (3) religious guidance depends on fear of God and desire to be in good standing within the community. However, we also need to be careful how we apply secular laws to insular communities so to protect the very people that concern us and not cause greater hardships. This is always a dilemma.

Humanist Future

Now let’s look ahead, and I’d like to mention two challenges to humanism. Firstly, we are experiencing an increase of religious faith world-wide and, more concerning, from fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements, which demand follower conformity and submission often conflicting with humanist values. According to sociologist, Peter Berger, ‘As one looks over the contemporary world, it’s not secularization that one sees, but an enormous explosion of passionate religious movements.’[5]

We can expect to see religious faiths playing a greater, not lesser, role in international affairs. In 1990 Islamic countries declared the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam as an alternative to the UN’s declaration of human rights. They sought to enshrine internationally Sharia law as the basis for Islamic human rights. Also, even though there is an increase in electoral democracies world-wide – a good thing – we see faith-dominated nations implementing public laws and administrative systems contrary to Western humanist values. The criminality of homosexuality and apostasy in Malaysia and selective application of women’s rights in Pakistan are some examples.

Another concern is the rise of those ‘passionate’ religious groups within Western societies, especially in the US and Europe. Through increased migration and higher birth rates sectarian groups seek legal exemptions or special treatment (such as Sharia courts, mentioned previously) while larger conservative groups seek public policy changes (such as restricting abortions and divorces and diluting science education that conflicts with religious faith). These trends are worrying as they potentially threaten the Enlightenment ideal of providing reason-based equality and fairness for all citizens.

The second challenge to humanism is the replacement of the rational certitudes of secularism with the pluralism and uncertainties of a post-secular world, a world where personal truths and realities dominate. Post-modernism may had its academic zenith in the late 20^th century, when it was cool to quote incomprehensible Foucault, Derrida, or Lyotard, but its effects are strongly felt today with the blurring of right and wrong; truth and fiction; and past, present, and future times, especially in the virtual worlds of television, the Internet, and of course the arts. [As an aside, one of my pet peeves with the History Channel on FoxTel cable television is its indiscriminate mixing of historical analyses, retelling of myths (especially biblical ones), and wild speculations with little discussion of the historical support for these stories.] So for post-secularists, ‘observation’ has become ‘construction’ and ‘knowledge’ has become ‘interpretation’.

The rationale of humanism, like that of the sciences and most religions, is founded on the belief in a single truth with a capital ‘T’ and in a single reality with a capital ‘R’. And, as inheritors of the Enlightenment, humanists and scientists both hold reason as central to the quest for human understanding. Unfortunately, such claims are no longer as credible today and are often met with ‘that may be true for you, but…’. So humanists need to find new ways of presenting their messages in attractive rather than just logical ways in this post-secular reality.

So, finally, let me offer some gratuitous advice before discussion time. A.C. Grayling famously said that the only form of intolerance acceptable in a tolerant society is towards ‘intolerance’ itself. We recognise this contradiction as a necessary truth. Similarly surprising, I would argue that rational humanists need to evangelise – to proclaim the ‘good news’ of humanism – so to impassion today’s post-secularists against destructive religious and political polemics on one hand and misguided tolerance on the other. As David Hume said some 300 years ago, ‘Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them’[6], so humanists go out there and be very passionate.

Thank you.

[2] Huffington Post 14 Apr 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/states-introducing-unprec_n_849251.html

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/21/pakistan-gang-rape-mukhtaran-mai

[4] http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/ShariaLawOrOneLawForAll.pdf

[5] P. Berger & A. Zijderveld, In Praise of Doubt (New York: HarperCollins, 2009) p. 4.

[6] D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40)  II.iii.3/415

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/ (a massive online site of academic articles on most philosophical topics)
• Templeton foundation (Christian organisation set up to promote discussion between science and religion):  Does moral action depend on reasoning? (series of responses) http://www.templeton.org/reason/
• BBC guide to the ethics associated with abortion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/
• Teach Yourself Understand Philosophy (Teach Yourself – General) (Paperback) gentle introduction to philosophy:  http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781444104998/Teach-Yourself-Understand-Philosophy
• Teach Yourself Understand Ethics (Teach Yourself – General) (Paperback) By (author) Mel Thompson another good intro by same author as one above. http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781444103519/Teach-Yourself-Understand-Ethics

Religion

• Godless Morality – Peter Singer and Marc Hauser: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200601–.htm
• Relationship that leads to life On evangelical take on Christian morality in Christianity Today online magazine: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/august/14.48.html
• Abortion in Jewish Law: http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48954946.html
• BBC summary of Judaism and abortion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/jewishethics/abortion_1.shtml

Psychology

• Steven Pinker, NYT article Moral Instinct, 13-Jan-2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1300665621-B8C05uYqKjPkma1+MLIkIw
• Does evolution explain human nature? http://www.templeton.org/evolution/ see comments re Templeton above.
• Does science make belief in God obsolete? http://www.templeton.org/belief/ (see above)
• Numerous papers by Jonathan Haidt (available on request): http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/publications.html

Natural Philosophy

The New Atheism: Just another Dogma?

Saturday, February 12th 2011

Oases/Borderlands, 2 Minona Street, Hawthorn

10.00 – 5.00, followed by drinks
This year’s speakers and topics are:

Tamas Pataki: „The New Atheism: Just Another Dogma?“

Cameron Shingleton: „Overkill: Richard Dawkins and The Limits of Pop-Scientific Atheism“

Petra Brown: „Messianic Atheism: Giving the Golden Calf a Good Roasting“

Stephen Stuart: „Dangerous beliefs: Zealotry, Wisdom and Public Health“

The „new Atheists“, notably Christopher Hitchins and Richard Dawkins, have been getting a lot of media time, setting up a choice between narrow-minded and dogmatic atheism versus religious faith. This is a false dichotomy. Belief in God is consistent with a perfectly rational materialism, just as not believing in God does not necessarily imply a dogmatic assertion of the non-existence of God.

Our four speakers explore non-Deist alternatives to the dogmatic brand of Atheism now being promoted and expose the questionable foundations of the New Atheists. The need for a third way, over and above religious tolerance is important if a genuinely humanist way of life is to be possible in modern conditions.

For more detail and further program and abstract updates go to:

http://ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/hss2011.htm

The Hegel Summer School invites you to a day of fruitful philosophical discussion in a collegial environment. The cost will normally be AUD 30 but we can offer a concession rate of AUD 20. Lunch and tea/coffee included.
Please pay in cash on the day and RSVP (including your dietary requirements) by COB on Tuesday, 8th of February 2011 to Lea Campbell on Lea.Campbell@gmx.net

http://www.kingjamesbibletrust.org/news/2010/02/19/richard-dawkins-lends-his-support-to-the-king-james-bible-trust

Alex McCullie

Centre for Adult Education: Melbourne
Content

MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD – 4 World-views

What is Reality?
We shall examine two competing ways of understanding reality. Naturalism with its strictly physical world-view and traditional Christianity with a divine creator and organiser. Since the 18th Century Enlightenment, western society has moved away from traditional Christian understandings to a more naturalistic view of existence. We shall compare the two views.

What is Truth?
Modernism (there are universally reasoned truth) and Post-modernism (we can have personal truths only) also compete with different explanations on the status of knowledge and truth. This conflict lead to the (in) famous science and history wars of the late 20th century.

5 sessions:
Tuesdays 6.00PM-7.30PM: 19/04/11, 03/05/11 to 24/05/11

Venue: CAE Building B – 253 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

Click to book

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Centre for Adult Education, Melbourne

SEARCHING FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS
Explore the historical Jesus, separate from the figure of devotion. In doing so, review the use of Christian and non-Christian sources and treatment of miracle claims, society, political and religion of early first century Israel and Middle East, analysing the primary source – the Gospels, review of research from the past 300 years, how Jesus, the man, is profiled by today’s scholars.

Class details
5 sessions:
Tuesdays 6.00PM-7.30PM: 22/02/11 to 22/03/11

Venue: CAE Building B – 253 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

Click to book
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Centre for Adult Education: Melbourne

BEING GOOD: 3 VIEWS OF MORALITY
We think about moral issues every day. Newspapers, television programs, and internet web-sites tell us what is immoral and moral.

Class details
5 sessions:
Tuesdays 7.30PM-9.00PM: 22/02/11 to 22/03/11

Venue: CAE Building B – 253 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

Content
We explore two traditional foundations of Western moral attitudes – traditional Religious beliefs and Philosophical thinking – with the more-recent and challenging research of Moral Psychology and ask the questions, does morality exist? Can there be universal moral rules? How do we know right from wrong? What is evil? How does culture influence morality?

Click to book

I grew up in a very secular family with a ‘what is the evidence’ mentality. So seeing ourselves as an intrinsic part of the physical world has always been an obvious approach to life. Moreover, overlaying a supramundane existence on that physical world that happens to address coincidentally human needs seemed all to fanciful to be plausible. Over the years of studying and lecturing in philosophy, religion, and science (with some history thrown in), I have softened my criticisms of those who actually believe in the supramundane. My position isn’t quite as ‘obvious’, as I have always assumed.

Free-will is another intrenched example for all of us. We all know the dilemma. Our best conception of the world seems to be that of direct observation guided by subsequent reasoning, the methods of the (natural) sciences. The sciences offer our best hope of disassociating our wishes and desires from the understandings of the world about us, the ‘It’ in Martin Buber’s terms. Similarly ’cause and effect’ is a model that well explains our experiences in that world. Only experimental results in Quantum Physics have presented dilemmas for the cause and effect model.

However our scientific approach with its causes and effects seems most unsatisfactory and unintuitive when it comes to our ‘I’ world – the potentially imaginary world of free-will, self, consciousness, love, and so on. Take free-will. Despite my lifetime of naturalism (even before knowing the term), I still get mad at rude drivers, discourteous waiters, violent people, and mass murders who presumably had not chosen to do the things they did. And to further complicate things I imagine I didn’t choose to get mad either. Their rudeness and violence and my reactions were the inevitable results of prior causes and none of us are immediately responsible for these acts (though perhaps partially for our specific makeups that contributed to these acts). My last bracketed comment asks whether our prior thoughts can be part of the causal mix for future actions. This thought is consistent with ‘us as conscious riders of our subconscious elephants’ analogy used by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia. Either way most people out there will give me short-shift, if I put this ‘not responsible’ argument, especially for the committers of heinous crimes. Perhaps my audience was caused to do so.

So I see a disconnect between abstract and interesting discussions of free-will by philosophers and the assumed free-will practice on the ground. Fianally I’m probably fortunate, at least compared to fellow travellers in the US, that our justice system in Australia seems less driven by retributive punishment, which would be so offensive to the non-free-willers. We are not into consecutive 99 year jail terms for serious offenders, for example, or for jail time for relatively minor offences. This may not always be so if the conservatives have their way here.

Alex McCullie

Many atheists go further. They extend the rejection to all supernatural or immaterial claims of ghosts, saints, afterlives, out-of-body-experiences, and miracles. This rejection approaches the world-view of naturalism, where all human experiences are seen as coming from strictly physical causes, causes as identified by the empirically-based sciences. So atheism itself is a relatively narrow ontological claim, a claim of no god or gods. It is not  that of a comprehensive world-view like naturalism or most religious traditions. Whether or not atheists support naturalism, I would like to think that they embrace the ideals of scientific enquiry. Moderate scepticism, open questioning, fair-minded analysis, and willingness to forgo previous beliefs in light of new experiences are worthwhile aims for any intellectual enquiry.

Most atheists would see religious beliefs and practices as supporting and promoting deluded supernatural claims. Membership in religious communities may offer social benefits, but they are founded on deluded claims, wishful beliefs ahead of rational thought. However the secular versions of religions, such as secular Buddhism and secular Judaism, create dilemmas for atheist and believers alike. How can someone be an atheist religionist?

The on-line atheist forum, Atheist Nexus, has been buzzing with discussion on the status of secular Buddhists. As Buddhists, they have typically have no Jewish-, Christian-, or Islamic-style personal God. The secular versions reject reincarnation and limit Karma to the everyday Western understanding of this life only. A supporter of secular Buddhism claimed that the Atheist Foundation of Australia had unreasonably extended its definition of atheism (beyond those commonly accepted) to exclude the secular versions of religions. He argued that atheism should be restricted to the original etymology of atheism, without (‘a’) god (‘theism’). This is interesting but is not necessarily a valid argument for today’s usage, the so-called etymological fallacy. A secular Buddhist or a secular Jew therefore would have just as much right to ascribe to atheism as any non-religious person. So does an active membership in any religious community automatically preclude someone from being an atheist?

Most religious practices involve worship. Buddhists, secular or otherwise, come close to worshipping Buddha. Atheists usually would not revere Darwin, Bacon, or Dawkins in the same way, admire yes but worship no. Worship, a common feature of most religions, (1. To honor and love as a deity; 2. To regard with ardent or adoring esteem or devotion, according to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/worship) seems something as an antithesis to atheism, and something that probably does preclude active secular religious people from, at least, a commonly-held broad sense of atheism.

Alex McCullie

In The Times, Chief Rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sachs, accuses Stephen Hawkins of doing bad theology while doing good science, when Hawkins purportedly said, “God did not create the universe.” This remark continues the scientist tradition of Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), who said to Napoleon that he had no need for God as an explanatory hypothesis.

Sachs rightfully says that science and religion can potentially offer different, non-competing understandings of the human situation, although in practice this separation seems limited to a few liberal Western theologians. Science describes and explains our world in physical terms, whereas religion uses faith and tradition to claim greater purposes. Or, as Sachs puts it, religion seeks to answer the ‘why’ question, where ‘why’ means an underlying purpose and design. Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) , like Plato before him, greatly influenced later Western theologies, particularly Christianity. Aristotle spoke of four different causes: (1) material cause (physical object itself); (2) formal cause (emerging shape of the object); (3) efficient cause (physical cause of today’s sciences); (4) final cause (inherent purpose or design of today’s religion). With any event, science seeks the efficient causes – what prior events caused the event. The efficient causes of science are limited to our self-contained physical reality. On the other hand religions work with final causes – what were the underlying purposes or design that explain the event? For Jews and Christians, the answer to final causes usually means understanding the will of God, sought outside the mundane world of science.

However I would argue that religious people regularly proffer faith-based causes for physical events, contradicting well-founded scientific explanations.  God caused this or that. Or that disaster came from God’s wrath and so on. Even in Western countries, the reasonableness of Sachs’ separation seems hypothetical only, with conservative religious leaders happy to interpret God’s physical intervention in the world. Unfortunately for most religions in Western societies, science has effectively replaced them as the trusted source of knowledge. Or, as sociologist, Steven Fuller, often comments, the public now blindly trusts science as was done with religions in the past, and, ironically, with less knowledge or involvement wit the public. This change of public loyalties is reflected in the continuing decline of church attendances, where any professed spiritualities are clearly divorced from religious observances and church attendances.

Now, let us go back to Jonathan Sachs’ argument with Hawkins. Sachs now enters the scientific discussion by suggesting that his theological commitment to God is a better scientific solution (though hardly presented as a falsifiable hypothesis) than multi-verses. He evokes Occam’s razor, the principle of parsimony commonly associated with medieval English philosopher and Franciscan monk William of Ockham (1285-1349), to suggest that God is the simpler of the two equally competing explanations. By simpler we usually mean needing less assumptions. This principle is much admired in intellectual thought and, ironically, is often used by atheists to exclude God when discussing the evolution of life. Evolution without God is simpler than with God for the same explanatory power. So, Sachs is claiming that his commitment to an ineffable, all powerful creator-sustainer God is simpler than proposing the possible existence of multiple universes to explain how our universe happens to have six, apparently improbable, constants that are needed for development of life  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constant). In reality, this is the latest battle ground for the design (teleological) argument for God, now marginalised to the speculative realms of cosmology. Every day design arguments, like Paley’s watch, have been lost to science and therefore discarded.

Whether or not God is simpler than multi-verses is irrelevant to what Sachs is doing. On one hand he decries Hawkins for doing bad theology and then Sachs argues for his commitment to God by doing bad science. Using ‘God’ is like offering magic as an explanation for any scientific problem. It stops the conversation as God is outside the tool set of science, unmeasurable. Furthermore it is hard to believe that Sachs or any other theologian would simply walk away from his or her belief in God, if there was no scientific support. And he or she should, if God is put forward as a scientific alternative to multiple universes.

Jonathan Sachs should keep to his own advice and keep God in the realm of religious belief and faith and not try to re-engineer his characterisation of God as in any way scientific, measurable by the tool set of science. Do good theology and not bad science.

Alex McCullie

‘In that same that religious fundamentalists refuse to see anything good or truthful in any religion but their own, there is a form of atheist fundamentalism that refuses to see anything good or truthful in any religion.’1

Both liberal and conservative theologians love to characterise the most outspoken critics of religion – speakers and writers like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens – as militant or fundamentalist, in a similar vein to their religious equivalents. This is a cute but ultimately a disingenuous ploy.

Religious fundamentalists, conservatives, and traditionalists commonly believe in the exclusive truths of their religious beliefs and see others as deluded, immoral, blasphemous, or evil. I would argue that, from a world perspective, many if not a vast majority of active religious people think like that. Just to be clear, I am ignoring the religiously indifferent, those who nominate themselves as part of a religious faith or denomination, but who rarely engage with its beliefs and practices. I am considering those who ‘live’ their religions and would expect their numbers to run into the many millions. Contrast this with the so-called ‘New Atheists’. They seem to be the same six or so writers who are targeted by the religious defenders as atheist fundamentalists. So we are talking a vastly different populations of those who claim exclusive truth in their religions and those who deny any truth (if that is truly their claims) in those same religions.

Let’s look at book sales. Dawkins or any of the other ‘New Atheists’ would be over the moon with book sales in excess of 100,000 copies. Christian evangelical writers regularly sell millions of copies to fellow Christians promoting end of the world prophesies and the like. Again, the reach of the religious critics seems minuscule compared to the polemic writings of the religious folk.

So what’s the issue? Religious people seem overly sensitive to any form of overt criticism. In some way they want nullify strong criticism by discrediting the authors like Dawkins and others, as if the general public cannot decide for themselves the value of the writings. Instead of using ‘New Atheism’ as a pejorative term, they should deal with the issues. Analyse church behaviours, acknowledge the failings like systemic Roman Catholic child abuse, and argue the overall benefits.

Myth = Non-factual Truth Trumping Evidence

‘Myths may or may not contain literal and factual truth, but this is not the point of them. Attempts to understand them in this way ignore the intention behind them and create controversies about issues that may well be less important than the points that the myth is intended to make.’2

The author continues by arguing, as an example, that statement ‘Jesus walked on the water’ is less a claim of facts than a declaration of the divine power of Jesus. Hill also argues that we should be aware of the actual claims being made before criticising them. Fair enough. Unfortunately for Symon Hill and other liberal religious writers like Karen Armstrong, the vast majority of practising Christians around the world do believe that these biblical stories really happened (in our physical sense). There was a physical resurrection of Jesus after his execution, the core belief of Christianity. It is not seen as purely a metaphor for rebirth and new life. This claim and other ‘miracle’ stories are contrary to our best understandings of the physical world and need to be refuted whenever such physical claims are made (and they are made regularly). Stripped of their popularity and awe, their physical claims are simply preposterous.

It is worth making the point that the more mythic or nuanced understandings may be prevalent in our secular societies. Credibility almost demands that. However we are in a minority from a world-wide perspective where the biblical stories are taken more literally. A good acronym to remember is that we are WIERDs, from Western, Industrialised, Educated, Rich, and Democratic societies. Our societies are secular and in the world-wide minority.

Finally, I do believe there are benefits to be had in religious belief, a support and sustenance of a closely-knit community that we commonly lack in everyday secular life and the opportunities to find (or make) meaning of aspirations beyond our immediate needs. Unfortunately so many religions world-wide package these potential benefits in environments that are self-righteous, moralistic, exclusive, controlling, delusional, and demeaning.

Pity!

Alex McCullie

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

So when you get the ‘you don’t know what you are talking about’ from a Christian apologist, just respond with this survey. My favourite response to the need for the ten commandments for the basis of morality is to say something like: ‘interesting, I need to re-read them.

Ignorant atheist: ‘Oh, by the way. Where do I find them?’

Christian apologist: ‘The Bible!’

Ignorant atheist: ‘Yes, of course. But which part’.

Christian apologist: ‘Not sure. Old Testament, I think’

Ignorant atheist: ‘Yes, I remember. They are at Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21. Perhaps you better check them also now that you know where to find them! I’d also recommend the NRSV as a pretty good translation, although I’m fond of the Jerusalem. Bye now!’

Life has some pleasures.

Alex McCullie