To mark the tenth installment of Popular Delusions, I'm turning my attention to one of the most common and enduring superstitions among the New Age set: the belief that naturally occurring crystals have some sort of special power to store, concentrate, or focus vaguely defined "energies".

A web search readily brings up hundreds of sites discussing the magical potencies of various crystals, most of which have to do with their supposed healing powers. Here's an entirely typical example:

Bloodstones are believed to have mystical and magickal powers, thought to be able to control the weather and have the ability to banish evil and negativity and to direct spiritual energy. It heightens the intuition and stimulates dreaming. It is a powerful revitalizer of your body and your mind. Bloodstone calms the mind, dispels confusion and aids in the decision making process. As the name suggests, they are very good at cleansing the blood and are known to be a powerful healer. It is used for an energy cleanser and immune stimulator for acute infections. It aids the circulation and reduces the formation of pus, neutralizing over acidification. It cleanses the lower chakras and realigns their energies.

All that in one stone! Others even discuss the supposed side effects or dangers of improper crystal use:

If a woman is trying to get pregnant or is in the first two trimesters of pregnancy, she should avoid any direct contact with Green Tourmaline.... Manipulating a woman's male energies by wearing Green Tourmaline could upset her endocrine system and could compromise the pregnancy or possibly harm the fetus.

Who knew ordinary crystals could be so dangerous? If this was true, one would think the many sites that sell green tourmaline should come with warnings. They might be exposing themselves to serious legal liability by selling those stones to just anyone! (I have to admit, I would just love to see that lawsuit...)

On the other hand, other crystal-boosting sites seem to shrug off these dangers. For example:

RULE NO. 1 - There are no rules for use of crystals or minerals in healing.

Now how could this be? If crystals do anything at all, there must be correct and incorrect ways to use them. If all methods of using crystals work equally well, the only possible explanation for this is that crystals are completely useless.

As with the green tourmaline example, one of the most ironic things is that different crystal-hawking sites often disagree about what the crystals they sell are supposed to do. One site says, "Fluorite's ordered crystalline structure brings stability and order into the wearer's life." But a different site advertising purple fluorite explains that it is for "Change. Helps one get out of ruts."

And how exactly do crystals work their magic? Do they have their own power? Apparently not:

There are a lot of people who think that crystals have power. They don't... Crystals are only tools which extend the power of intent of the healer and a medium.

On the other hand:

...we have proof that all crystals have power. The Power of love, from deep in the earth.

This flood of conflicting claims presents the sincere believer with a variety of serious dilemmas. Is there a right way or a wrong way to use crystal power? Which crystals are most effective for a given aim? Can crystals be dangerous? Is it possible that some crystals are dangerous in ways not yet recognized? Plainly, all of these are important questions, especially the last two. But how is the crystal enthusiast to go about answering them? There are a multitude of conflicting answers. What answer should we believe, and why?

As with all cases of religious confusion, these conflicting claims have come about because there is no evidence whatsoever that crystals have any supernatural or magical abilities. As one pseudoscience site puts it:

...no instruments can pick up these vibrations or record any difference in energy around a crystal as crystals are things of Mother Earth not of man.

But if this alleged energy can't be measured or recorded, then how does anyone know it exists in the first place? What is the basis for all these grandiose and fanciful claims about the ailments and maladies that specific types of crystals can solve? The above mentioned site calls it a "hard and fast intuitive fact", which is just another way of saying that all of this is made up. Crystal use can be rescued from danger and chaos, but only by consigning it to irrelevance.

As often happens, New Age misunderstandings are built on a kernel of genuine scientific fact. Some crystals, such as quartz, display a useful property called the piezoelectric effect: they generate an electric voltage when stretched or compressed. This property has led to their use in a wide variety of industrial applications, including sensors that measure pressure, vibration and frequency. They're also used to build miniaturized motors, record player needles, radio transmitters and receivers, and even loudspeakers. The piezoelectric effect is a well-understood and precisely measurable phenomenon, however, and has nothing to do with meaningless handwaving about healing powers, chakra points or positive energies.

There's no doubt that crystals are an elegant example of the beauty that arises from the laws of physics. Fantastic formations like those of New Mexico's Lechuguilla Cave prove the point. But we don't need to believe crystals have any kind of magical power to appreciate their beauty. Such superstitions cheapen and undermine what there is of genuine wonder in the world. We need no supernatural add-ons to place between us and nature.

Other posts in this series:

• Popular Delusions

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician, an elected member of that country's Parliament, infamous for his right-wing views on immigration and social policy. In 2008, he released a short film, Fitna, which criticizes Islamic radicalism by interspersing video footage of terrorist attacks with quotes from the Quran and from prominent Islamic religious authorities praising the use of violence. The film can be viewed here - caution, contains some graphic images.

Now there's some news that's incredible in its audacity: a prosecutor in the kingdom of Jordan has charged Wilders with blasphemy and demanded that he be extradited to Jordan to stand trial.

Let's be perfectly clear about this: Geert Wilders is a citizen of the Netherlands. He is not a citizen of Jordan; as far as I know, he has never set foot in Jordan. Everything he has said was spoken in the Netherlands, where the right of free speech is recognized and protected. Yet because his speech was heard in Islamic nations, and because it offended them, those nations demanded that he be extradited from his home country and sent to one of their countries, to stand trial under their primitive and repressive laws.

Whatever you may think of Wilders' personal or political views, this development ought to lay to rest any remaining doubts regarding the goals of those groups he has criticized. By far the majority of states where Islam has become dominant have become theocracies, and like all theocracies through history, they do not want intellectual diversity, freedom of thought, or open debate on a level playing field. They want enforced silence and obedience, and they do not want to meet their critics on the battlefield of ideas, but to harm and punish them regardless of the merit of their arguments.

Of course, Wilders is in little danger from this ridiculous demand. Dutch prosecutors declined to charge him with anything, understandably so as he had broken no laws. But the 56-member-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference strongly condemned that deciison and said it was "deeply annoyed" by it. (The next time someone says that Islam is for the most part a moderate and peaceful religion, ask them if they can produce quotes from a 56-nation Islamic conference defending the right of free speech.)

This affair is, however, an excellent illustration of the chilling danger posed by laws which seek to ban "hate speech". Even if passed with the best intentions in the world, they are swiftly made use of by tyrants and theocrats who recognize quite well that any means of persuading the state to censor ideas can easily be used against their critics. Make no mistake - if Wilders was extradited and imprisoned, he would not be the last. Swiftly on the heels of that demand would come the next one, and the next, each one arrogantly presuming the right to punish anyone anywhere who says anything uncomplimentary about Islam. The OIC, in fact, referred to the "thin line" separating freedom of speech from what they want to be illegal. In other words, they're saying it's very easy to cross the line between what they view as permissible and impermissible criticism, which means the zone of permissible criticism must be a very small one indeed.

The OIC also says that Fitna "instigates feelings of hatred, animosity and antipathy towards Muslims". And that may well be true. But the film, from what I've seen of it, does not invent imaginary crimes or fictitious outrages to attribute to Muslims. (This in contrast to Muslim theocracies which still teach the "blood libel" idea to their children.) To the contrary, Wilders' film replays and exposes things which Muslims have actually done and actually said. If Muslim leaders feel that they're shown in a bad light by these things, then they should go after the Muslims who've advocated or committed acts of appalling bloodshed in the name of that religion. Those should be the people they seek to extradite and bring to trial. To instead attack people who point out these evils gives the impression that they do not care about the savagery and brutality committed in the name of Islam, but rather, that they want to silence the people who bring it to public attention.

The number of different religions on this planet is vast, and all their associated arguments and apologetics form a library that's vaster still. No matter how well-read or well-traveled any atheist is, they're bound to run into claims every so often that they've never heard before. It happens to me at least once a month, on average. And I have to admit, when I first hear a religious apologetic or miracle claim that's new to me, often my initial response is to feel a little tremor, as I wonder, "Could that really be true?"

You would think I'd know better by now. Invariably, in the cases I've looked into, the fact being claimed is either false, unverifiable, or doesn't prove what the claimant thinks it does. And even if one such fact were to bear out, it would have to overcome a considerable weight of contrary evidence. Still, I'm glad of that momentary tremor of doubt. To my thinking, it's a reliable sign of open-mindedness.

Not everyone shares this trait. On more than one occasion, I've run into theists who are so arrogantly certain their beliefs are supported by the facts that they feel they don't even need to check what the facts actually are. When these smug and ignorant assertions are in conflict with reality, the results are always hilarious. Culled from the responses I've received on this blog and other sites, here are some of my favorite examples of arrogant apologists who don't let their ignorance get in the way of a good talking point:

Was Tyre destroyed and left barren as the Bible predicts? A commenter at Greta Christina's by the name of Rev. Cawley asserted, in contradiction to my essay "The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists", that the Bible contains many miraculously fulfilled prophecies. Here was one of his examples regarding the ancient city of Tyre:

Of Tyre, God said through the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 26: 4, 5, "And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and it shall become a spoil to the nations." Today, fisherman mend their nets on the barren rock where Tyre once stood. God also said in Ezekiel 26:14, "And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God." The site of ancient Tyre is quite suitable for habitation, but the prophecy has stood fulfilled now for over 2, 000 years, and Tyre has never been rebuilt.

In response to Mr. Cawley's claim that Tyre has never been rebuilt, I posted satellite photos of the city today. No doubt, the 115,000 or so inhabitants of Tyre would be quite surprised to learn that they're living in a city that has never been rebuilt.

In reality, although Tyre was fought over and conquered many times in antiquity, it has been inhabited almost continuously since 1300 BCE, and was an important commercial site and trading post for much of that time. Evidently, Mr. Cawley could not be bothered to check whether the city actually existed before asserting that it no longer does, because the Bible says so. His blithe willingness to erase whole cities from history in the name of an apologetic talking point is a superb example of invincible ignorance.

Did PBS put words in the mouths of creationists to make them look bad? Another of my favorite examples from Greta Christina's: a post where she discussed "Judgment Day," the PBS special about the Dover, Pennsylvania intelligent-design trial in which the IDers were decisively defeated.

In her post, she quoted an exchange from the show in which plaintiffs' lawyer Robert Muise got the ID proponent Scott Minnich to admit he had never bothered to do any of the experiments that would have tested his ideas about ID. An offended creationist commenter named "blilley" huffily asserted that an exchange which paints ID in such a poor light couldn't possibly have been real, and must have been made up by PBS to make proponents of ID look bad:

I guess in instances where PBS doesn't have any real evidence to back up certain propoganda objectives they can always resort to using imaginary, made-up evidence confident that people like you will call it "overwhelming".

In fact, the reenactments in "Judgment Day" were taken directly from trial transcripts, and this "imaginary, made-up" exchange between Muise and Minnich actually happened in the courtroom. Clearly, blilley thought that Minnich came away from the cross-examination looking foolish. In the future, I suggested to him, he should consider why that is, rather than leaping to accuse scientists of inventing arguments to attribute to creationists that make them look bad.

Were the original twelve apostles "Earth shakers"? In my post from last year "How Did the Apostles Die?", I pointed out the curious fact that there are no contemporary historical records of the twelve apostles, neither of their lives, nor of their deeds, nor of their deaths. They vanish into obscurity almost immediately after being named in the Bible - a fact which fits with the conclusion that Christianity began with a belief in mythical figures that only gradually transmuted into belief about real people in history. A commenter took issue with this conclusion:

What you are forgetting here is that these 11 men, who were previously fishermen, carpenters and tax collectors, suddenly became Earth shakers. This group of nobodies were somehow able to convince thousands upon thousands that there is one true God and that his son Jesus came so that we may know the one who created this Earth and everything on it, in it, above and below it, on a personal level.

If the apostles were indeed "Earth shakers", then one would think that it would be trivial to list some of their mighty, earth-shaking deeds. Was this commenter up to the challenge? Manifestly not, because when challenged, he vanished without ever elaborating on this comment. Apparently, he felt no compunction in grandiosely claiming that the apostles were men of tremendous influence even though he didn't know of a single specific thing that any of them said or did. His blustery assertion only served to confirm the point that there are no contemporary historical records of how the apostles lived or died.

Did interracial marriage ever need to be affirmed by court order? This last howler comes from the apologetics website CrossExamined, whose author Frank Turek set up a post about same-sex marriage and the danger it poses to our society. It seems this danger is that allowing gay marriage will cause everyone to turn gay and cease reproducing, thus spelling the doom of civilization - clearly the conclusion Turek was putting forward, even if he didn't explicitly spell it out. But this isn't the howler I was referring to. In the comments, I and several others pointed out the similarity between arguments of anti-gay-marriage advocates now and anti-interracial-marriage arguments a generation earlier, and asked if this reasoning could also be used to prove that anti-miscegenation laws should have been allowed to stand. A commenter named "Plumb Bob" seemed bewildered by this point:

In response to:
"For Pete's sake, if we left all civil-rights decisions up to "the people" interracial marriage would probably still be illegal. This is one of the reasons the Supreme Court and the Judicial Branch in general exists in the first place."

This is simply and completely false. I don't know of a single instance where a high court ruling was required in order to allow interracial marriage.

This is slightly less ignorant than trying to erase the city of Tyre from history, but not by much. For someone who cares so deeply about marriage, Plumb Bob evidently had never heard of the landmark 1967 civil rights case Loving v. Virginia, in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down all state laws against interracial marriage.

Obviously, a person is not required to have a comprehensive knowledge of American history before being allowed to argue against gay marriage. But one would think, at the very least, that a person lacking such knowledge would have the humility to approach the topic with caution - rather than pronouncing, as in this case, that assertions made by more knowledgeable people are "simply and completely false". Like many of the invincibly ignorant, he never even considered that the facts might not line up with what he preferred to be true, nor that others with whom he disagreed might know more than he himself.

I leave you with this gem of a classic - a creationist using one of the most hilariously inept variations of the second-law-of-thermodynamics argument against evolution ever seen:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

This passage has been widely reproduced on the internet under the title "Creationist Almost Discovers the Sun".

Thanks to Daylight Atheism commenter Robert Madewell for the photo in this post.

I have two short announcements to bring to your attention:

• Daylight Atheism commenter Eshu has started his own blog, Bridging Schisms. If the first few posts are any indication, it ought to be a fine addition to the ranks of the atheist blogosphere. Go check it out and tell him I sent you!

• John Loftus of Debunking Christianity will soon be releasing a book, Why I Became an Atheist. I haven't read it yet, but he's collected some superb endorsements. It definitely ought to be worth looking into.

Summary: Brilliant, brave, inspiring. Read this book.

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the street by a Muslim fanatic, Mohammed Bouyeri, who was enraged by van Gogh's production of a film titled Submission which criticizes the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies. Van Gogh's murderer shot him eight times, cut his throat, and left a letter pinned to his body with a butcher knife.

The letter was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It said, in essence, "You're next."

If you're an atheist and you've never heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you need to read this book. Infidel, her autobiography, retraces the incredible journey of her life: from a childhood in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, where Islam was the law of the land and women were slaves, to freedom and enlightenment in the West, where she became an atheist, rose to fame as a member of the Dutch Parliament, enraged Muslims and leftists alike with her unsparing criticisms of Islam, and ultimately played a role in the toppling of a Dutch government. Submission was her film, produced on her behalf by Theo van Gogh. This book is the story behind that film, and gives insight into a personal enlightenment and a life that spans millennia of human cultural development.

Infidel begins with Hirsi Ali's childhood in Somalia, daughter of a family of nomadic desert herders. As it opens, her grandmother, a fierce, spare woman, is teaching her to recite the names of her ancestors going back three hundred years. In Somalian society, one's ancestry and clan are everything, determining social status and the course of one's life. Ayaan and her siblings, her brother Mahad and sister Haweya, grew up following the same tribal rhythms that have dictated human existence for millions of years: moving around with their animals, following the rains, all their possessions stacked on their backs. When she was five, in accordance with custom, she was mutilated by men of the tribe, her clitoris cut off so that she would remain "pure" for her future husband.

However, she was not entirely disconnected from the larger world. Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a powerful man in Somalian society and one of the leaders of a rebel movement working against the dictator Siad Barré. It was this involvement that led to Hirsi Ali's family fleeing Somalia while she was still young, traveling to Saudi Arabia and later to Kenya. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, a cruel and violent theocracy where women were oppressed and enslaved, left a vivid impression on her, and even while young she wondered why the law of God dictated that she had to be forever inferior to men.

Hirsi Ali spent her adolescence in Kenya, which was more open and free of a society than Saudi Arabia, but only relatively so. A rigid, fundamentalist strain of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, was sending Saudi-backed preachers into Kenya and throughout Africa. On one occasion, a Quran tutor beat her so severely for disobedience that he fractured her skull, necessitating emergency surgery to save her life. Still, the schools of Kenya were her introduction to English and to Western authors - classics like the Bronte sisters, but also pulp romance novelists like Danielle Steele, all of which gave her a glimpse into a different world where women could decide their own destiny. She also, for a brief time, had her first boyfriend - a Kenyan boy named Kennedy, who shocked her by telling her he was an atheist.

The defining moment in Hirsi Ali's life came at the age of 23, when her father announced that he had given her away in marriage to a man she had never met. Deciding she could not spend her life in servitude to a stranger, she traveled to Europe under the pretense of meeting her husband there. Instead, she escaped to the Netherlands and was granted asylum. On arrival, she was amazed by the peace, freedom and prosperity available to all citizens, and decided she wanted to study political science to learn why some societies thrive while others are failures. She worked as a translator to support herself, was eventually granted citizenship, and worked her way up to a position at a think tank. Her doubts about the rigid, restrictive dogmas of Islam steadily loosened, and the defining moment came after 9/11, when she realized that Osama bin Laden was accurately obeying the teachings of the Quran and that she could no longer in good conscience remain a member of such a religion:

...I looked in the mirror and said out loud, "I don't believe in God." I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief.

It felt right. There was no pain, but a real clarity. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece - that was all over... From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.

When she began giving speeches and interviews criticizing the repressive teachings of Islam, Hirsi Ali became notorious. Eventually, she joined the Netherlands' opposition Liberal Party as a candidate for office, and was elected to Parliament in 2003. While in office, she successfully implemented reforms such as requiring the Dutch police to count honor killings as a separate category of murders. It was also at this time that she collaborated with Theo van Gogh. The book tells of the chaotic time after his murder, when she went into hiding under the protection of Dutch security services.

In a coda, we learn of the scandal that erupted when it was discovered Hirsi Ali had lied on her application for asylum (since escaping an arranged marriage was not considered to be a proper justification for refugee status at that time), although she had been freely admitting this on national media for years. Ultimately, she stepped down from Parliament, but when the Dutch immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, tried to strip her of her citizenship, such a furor erupted that Verdonk was forced to resign and her party's coalition government collapsed. In the end, Hirsi Ali retained her Dutch citizenship and is now employed by an American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. She still receives threats on a regular basis, but she has continued to speak out against Islam and to bring a message of freedom to women in Muslim societies throughout the world.

In a review this brief, I can't possibly do justice to the breadth of Hirsi Ali's journey or the dangers she's faced down. She's literally retraced the history of human progress in the span of a single lifetime, traveling from a nomadic Stone Age existence to an elected leadership position in a modern, industrialized democracy. Along the way, she's overcome obstacles most of us can scarcely conceive, and shown more courage than I hope any of us will ever be called upon to display.

We who are born in the First World, who are taught ideas of individual liberty and human rights from childhood, can take these concepts for granted, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in a world where they are nonexistent. To escape the suffocating bonds of repression, she had to face down family, clan, culture, religion - the entire universe of her society aligned against her, all teaching in unison that a woman's role in life is to be a pious, unprotesting slave, to be handed off like property from father to husband, and to be silent and submissive in the face of abuse and degradation. She did not live through the Enlightenment, when the landscape of ideas changed around her. Rather, she had to reinvent and rediscover them all for herself, forging a new identity from scratch, and then finding the courage to act on those newfound ideals to flee her home for a society she had never known. That she not only did so, but excelled and thrived there, is a testament to her courage and her passion for justice and equality.

Hirsi Ali speaks with eloquence and passion, not just with her words but with her life, when it comes to the dangers of excessive tolerance. European governments' fear of ever again being perceived as racist, though well-founded and understandable, has led them to commit the opposite error: tolerating all cultures, even those that oppress women, enshrine ignorance, and violate the rights of individuals. Some cultural practices need to be criticized and changed, no matter whether they are of ancient vintage or based in religious beliefs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has done humanity a true service by shining a light on these evils and calling them what they are, and standing fearlessly against the violent fanatics who would kill in the name of dogma. In every sense, her story is unique and compelling.

I really do feel that this book spoke to me in a way that no other atheist author ever has. Books about human rights and ethics in the abstract are one thing, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived that battle, not just contemplated it. Her deeply personal and candid recounting shows unmistakably why these things matter, why they were fought for and why we are still fighting for them. With her, we can say that no, all cultures and all beliefs are not equal. For the sake of humankind, and especially for the sake of womankind, the ones that are wrong need to be fought and defeated.

For my northern hemisphere readers, the full flush of summer has arrived. In honor of the season, I've picked an appropriate poem for this installment of Poetry Sunday: the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' idyllic, evocative hymn to nature and childhood, "Fern Hill", from his 1946 collection Deaths and Entrances.

Born in 1914, Dylan Thomas was named in honor of his uncle, a Unitarian minister. He moved to London in 1934 and that same year published his first volume of poetry, 18 Poems, which was highly acclaimed. A sought-after speaker, he frequently gave readings of his work both in person and on the radio: both his poetry and also scripts and plays such as Under Milk Wood. He was excused from military service in World War II on account of chronic pulmonary illness, but witnessed the Blitz firsthand while living in London. He recounted the experience in a poignant poem, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London", which reveals the author's freethought sympathies: "After the first death, there is no other." As Ian Lancashire puts it in his analysis of the poem, "Without relying on religious belief in personal salvation or an afterlife, Thomas represents death consolingly as part of life" (source).

Thomas' poems are luminous, dense with imagery, rich with brilliant detail and metaphor. During his life and after, he was internationally acclaimed. His deservedly most famous work, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", was written for his father, who was dying of cancer. Like "Refusal", it does not appeal to an afterlife for consolation, but rather calls upon us to face death with dignity and defiance in this world. Thomas died in 1953 at the age of 39; his death was generally supposed to be the consequence of alcoholism, but evidence surfaced in 2004 indicating it may have been a result of complications from pneumonia.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Other posts in this series:

• Poetry Sunday

One of the most persistent misconceptions about atheism is that, if there is no supernatural soul and human beings are made merely of atoms and molecules, then our lives would be deprived of meaning. Asserts Christian apologist Phil Fernandes:

If atheism is true, then man is mere molecules in motion. He has no greater value than the animals. In fact, human life would be no more sacred than the existence of a rock.

This conclusion betrays a very warped view of the nature of worth and value. It works only if you assume, not just that human beings have souls, but that having a soul is the only possible determinant of moral worth.

This reasoning leads to conclusions that are deeply counterintuitive, to say the least. We could imagine God creating two human beings: one of which who had no consciousness or higher brain function, existed in a permanent vegetative coma, but had a soul; whereas the other was a rational, emotional adult who dreams at night, laughs, falls in love, raises children with love and affection, and cares deeply about the welfare of others; but who was a mere assemblage of molecules, created by God without a soul. By this apologetic logic, the first one would be a moral person, deserving of full rights, worth moving heaven and earth to protect; while the second would be less than an animal, the moral equivalent of a stone, whom we could carve up or destroy at our pleasure as if she were an inanimate object. Does this make any sense at all?

Whether you believe in a soul or not, it's nonsense to claim that the presence or absence of a soul is the only thing that could possibly matter when it comes to judging the value or worth of a being. The pantheists of old asserted that everything in nature had a spirit of its own which gave that thing its unique character. Using the same reasoning as Fernandes, we could imagine a defender of pantheism arguing that, if stones do not have souls, marble and slate must not have any distinct qualities that justify treating them differently.

If we reject this argument for stone, we should reject it for people as well. Even if atheism is true and human beings are nothing but molecules in motion, all the qualities that might reasonably be suspected to have some bearing on our moral worth - our self-awareness, our personality, our sense of conscience and empathy, our hopes and fears for the future, our ability to feel joy and sorrow, our rationality, our creativity, our feelings of awe and wonder - all these things would still exist. No matter what the physical basis for consciousness is, they are manifest facts about us and they are not going away.

Imagine if neuroscientists, peering ever more deeply into our heads, discovered that at the tiniest level, our brains were made of hydraulic systems shuttling water through pipes and valves, or an intricate, submicroscopic clockwork of brass springs and cogwheels. No doubt, these discoveries would cause profound shifts in our self-understanding. But should they cause shifts in our moral understanding? Of course not! The facts about us that give us moral value are external and readily apparent to all. There is no possible way they could be affected by other facts about our physical makeup on a microscopic level.

Overcoming Bias has an insightful post about "Egan's Law," coined by the sci-fi writer Greg Egan: It all adds up to normality. No matter how our minds work, they must be organized so as to produce the traits and behaviors we already observe in each other. If we are made of atoms and molecules, then we have always been made of atoms and molecules. This conclusion will not - cannot, by definition - change any of the facts about who we are, what we have done and what we can do.

If we are made of molecules, then Shakespeare's plays were written by a human being made of molecules, Verdi's Requiem was composed by a human being made of molecules, Macchu Picchu and the Pyramids and the Buddhas of Bamiyan were built by human beings made of molecules. Would that make any of them less beautiful or less inspiring?

Our value lies in what we're capable of, not what we're made of. Love and compassion and the desire for justice are equally praiseworthy regardless of whether they come from an intricate ballet of atoms or from flesh imbued with spirit. Art and architecture retain their capacity to enthrall us, regardless of who held the pen. Even if we are made of matter, tastes still have their savor, great music still moves us, and heroic writing still inspires brave souls to action. We have nothing to lose, so let us not fear to discover that we are, in truth, a quintessence of dust. That knowledge cannot deprive us of our personhood, our value, our dignity, or anything else worth caring about.

While reading Richard Sloan's book Blind Faith, I came across a passage that jumped out at me:

[Gallup Polling] also indicates that from 1939 to 2005, 37 to 49 percent of those surveyed reported that they attended church or synagogue in the week before they were surveyed. From the period to 1992 to 2005, those who reported that they attended once per week ranged from 28 to 36 percent. For those reporting attendance almost every week, the range was 9 to 14 percent.

What I noticed is that the percentage of Americans who reported church attendance every week - 9 to 14 percent - is virtually identical to the percentage of Americans who are non-religious. Although a large majority of Americans state that they believe in God and attend religious services at least periodically, the number who are actually committed to religious belief and observance and consider it a major part of their lifestyle seems to be much smaller. It's tempting to speculate that, in America or any other society, the number of people who are fiercely religious tends to be about equal to the number who are not religious at all, with a majority in between that holds tightly to neither pole of opinion.

It's a well-known phenomenon that, when asked by pollsters, people dramatically overstate how often they attend church. Since it's widely believed that religion is a marker of good character, and since people naturally want to think of themselves as good and appear good to others, they tend to give false answers to this question. (This is why surveys announcing that "90% of the population believes in God!" should be taken with a grain of salt.) If this misleading data was stripped away, the reported number of people who are religious might shrink by a startlingly large amount.

These facts are a counterweight to those who claim that atheism is unnatural and will never be popular. What they show is that, far from being an ineradicable trait deeply ingrained into the minds of all humanity, religious belief is very much a cultural phenomenon. There's a small minority which is truly religious, but there's a much larger number whose level of religious commitment is low or negligible. Since religious belief is the dominant social norm, many of these people go along with the crowd, or call themselves religious to fit in. But if it were not the prevailing prejudice that being a good person requires religion, most of the people in this group would have little to stop them from leaving.

It's plausible that this middle group can be influenced by those at either pole, depending on which group is more successful in the court of public opinion. Given that American religiosity has been declining with each new generation, it's not out of the question that we will come to a tipping point where the majority will be atheists, not believers. Any such transformation is still a long way off, but there is good reason to think it is at least possible.

In their endless quest to evangelize the world, Christian apologists like this one are prone to making grandiose claims about the supposed perfect accuracy of biblical prophecy:

Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events - in detail - many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter — no errors.

Needless to say, this claim requires a considerable amount of interpretive flexibility, as well as a very loose definition of the terms "prophecy" and "fulfilled". Even then, a knowledgeable atheist can dismantle it with little trouble. Hugh Ross, the apologist quoted above, also gives a convenient definition of what constitutes a true prophet:

The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God's prophets, as distinct from Satan's spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error.

With that definition in mind, let's examine some of the more prominent erroneous and failed prophecies of the Bible.

The Destruction of Tyre

One of the most famous unfulfilled Bible prophecies has to do with the destruction of Tyre. In Ezekiel 26, the prophet predicts that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer and destroy the city of Tyre, and that it would remain desolate from that day on:

For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people... And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach... And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God.

This prophecy was a twofold failure. Nebuchadnezzar did besiege Tyre, but he failed to conquer it; he did not break down its walls or enter into its gates, as the Bible claimed he would. Alexander the Great did conquer it later, but he is not mentioned and was not the object of the prophecy. And neither of them destroyed the city permanently, as the Bible predicts. Indeed, Tyre exists to this day, on the same spot as the ancient city, and tens of thousands of people still live there.

The Egyptian Exile

Also in Ezekiel, in chapter 29, there is a very curious prophecy of doom for Egypt:

Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt... I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. Yet thus saith the Lord God; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered. And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.

I think even a biblical literalist can agree that none of this ever happened. Egypt was never desolate, much less for forty years at a stretch, and its people were neither scattered nor later regathered. The archaeological evidence supports no such conclusion; even the Bible itself does not record this ever occurring. And an apologist cannot claim this is still in the future, because the verse specifically addresses the pharaoh, a system of government which no longer exists.

God's Failed Land Promise

In the early chapters of Genesis, God makes a sweeping promise to the patriarch Abraham:

"In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

—Genesis 15:18

This was no small promise. The territory promised to the Jews in this verse would encompass not just the modern-day borders of Israel, but would contain most or all of the modern nations of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Needless to say, this promise was not kept. Even at the height of its power (which wasn't much, to judge from the archaeological evidence), ancient Israel never controlled anywhere near this much territory. And if modern Rapture-believing Christians are correct, the world will end very soon, forever foreclosing any possibility that this prophecy will be fulfilled at a later time.

The usual apologetic rebuttal to this claim is that God's promise was conditional, predicated on the Jews' good behavior, and when they turned from him and worshipped other gods, he took away their rightful inheritance. This argument is flatly contradicted by the biblical text. In Deuteronomy 9:5, God says that even though the Israelites are wicked, he will still deliver the land to them, so as not to renege on his promise to Abraham:

Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Non-Return of Jesus

By far the most significant prophetic failure of the Bible is the New Testament's repeated, and false, predictions that Jesus would return and establish the kingdom of God on earth during the lifetime of his original disciples. More verses than I can list here make this claim. ("2000 Years Late" on Ebon Musings has a longer list.) But passages such as the one below make it very clear that the New Testament authors anticipated an imminent return:

"When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes."

—Matthew 10:23

Two schools of theology have arisen to deal with this problem. One, the apocalyptic school, believes that these verses were meant to apply to the present day (despite clear indications of timing such as the one above, or Jesus' repeated references to "this generation"). The other, the preterist school, believes that these verses referred not to a global destruction but to an ancient, local event, such as the destruction of Jerusalem. In their own way, each school acknowledges the problem; in their own way, each one fails to face up to it. But an atheist who looks at these passages with a clear eye, unconcerned with the theological dictum that the Bible must be rescued from error no matter how contorted the reinterpretation, can easily see them for what they truly say and recognize the obvious broken promise.

Inspired by an analogy invented by Daniel Dennett, I have some thoughts for the benefit of those who believe that an atheist's life must necessarily be meaningless and nihilistic.

Imagine that there's a society which, instead of God, believes in Cupid. This is the Cupid of Greek mythology, as co-opted by greeting card companies: the rosy-cheeked cherub with tiny wings, who flutters around firing magical arrows into people's hearts that make them fall in love. Imagine that people in this society were genuinely, wholeheartedly convinced of the existence of Cupid; they build altars in his honor, sing his praises every week, and feel extremely devoted and thankful to him for conferring upon them a feeling as joyous and wonderful as love.

Now imagine that this society, like ours, has its skeptics. These skeptics note that Cupid cannot be seen and leaves no evidence of his presence. They notice that people who are extremely ill-suited for each other sometimes fall in love, which would cast some doubt on Cupid's wisdom and benevolence even if he did exist. And, finally, they observe that love appears to be a neurological phenomenon whose antecedents can be detected in the physical functioning of human brains. Some of these people finally come to doubt the widely held assumption of their society, and conclude that, in reality, it's highly probable that no such being as Cupid exists.

What is the rational next step for doubters of Cupid? Cupidian apologists will be only too happy to tell them: "If you don't believe in Cupid, then you must believe that love is a superstitious delusion and doesn't really exist! What a bleak and miserable worldview that is! You may try to convince yourself otherwise, but we all know that love does exist, and that it's a wonderful and beautiful feeling that gives meaning to our lives. The fact that love exists is proof of Cupid's existence, and you're being ignorant and unreasonable to say otherwise."

In this scenario, the fallacy should be clear. Disbelief in Cupid does not require a person to disbelieve in love. On the contrary, even a Cupid skeptic can and most likely will agree that love exists, that it's a wonderful feeling and that it confers meaning on our lives. One can maintain this even while believing that love is a neurochemical phenomenon occurring within our brains, not the result of invisible magic arrows. All these skeptics say to society is that love is not caused by what they always thought it was caused by. They agree with everyone else about the effect; they simply differ about the cause.

Why would denying the existence of Cupid rob love of its power? I may love my partner because she's kind and compassionate to me, because she's been there for me in times of trouble, because we enjoy similar activities, because she selflessly gives of herself to make me happy, because I've grown close to her so that her happiness is bound up with my own. These are all perfectly sufficient and rational reasons to fall in love, and don't need the blessing of magic arrows to confer validity on them. The fact that love is grounded in material reasons rather than supernatural causes doesn't make it any less real or less true.

The situation is the same in our world. Too often, religious apologists seek to take credit for love, happiness, purpose and other desirable qualities by asserting that God causes them, and then claiming that to deny the cause is to deny the effect. Not so. We acknowledge the effect, but propose a different cause. We still find meaning in all the other things that give life meaning - in friendship and community, in exploring and learning about the world, in applying our skills and our minds to worthwhile endeavors. We just don't believe that a supernatural being is required to confer meaning on these endeavors when they are already meaningful in themselves. Anyone who acknowledges that denying Cupid is not the same thing as denying love itself should take the next step and recognize that atheists can and do affirm life and all it offers without any necessity of believing in a hidden supernatural being that undergirds it all.

It's been a long time in the making, but I've finished the tenth and final chapter of my book. Its title is "Into the Clear Air", and it discusses the process of becoming an atheist, on an individual level, and the effort to organize atheists on a political level. As before, I'm open to editorial review from my readers; if you've read previous chapters and are interested in reading this one, let me know.

What's next? I want to write a brief epilogue, then I need to go back over the book, do some editorial polishing, and straighten out all the footnotes. Then I think it will be ready for publication, assuming I can find a publisher who's interested. I intend to make a complete draft of the whole book available for critique when it's ready.