I departed from the Christian faith about a decade ago, right around the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks, although my apostasy had tremendously more to do with my studies during that period at Hofstra University than with any moral outrage at the acts religion can inspire. As I took courses in anthropology, biology, philosophy and even literature, I came to realize that the compartmentalization of my mind, which I had already begun to implement, was untenable: I could not be a believing Christian, who accepted the bible as basically true, in one compartment while amassing my knowledge of the species and the cosmos in another one. With surprising haste, the soul was exorcised from the corpus, god was removed from human evolution, fine-tuning slinked away into the dustbin of bad ideas and I, in a real sense, was liberated from nearly two decades of carefully inculcated delusion.

Still, though, being an ex-Christian is not the same as never having been Christian in the first place. My feelings toward Christianity and, indeed, my susceptibility to Christian ideas are qualitatively different from those feelings and that susceptibility with respect to Islam, Hinduism, Judaism or any other faith among the countless multitudes. I recall Christopher Hitchens, writing in Vanity Fair last October while in the midst of battling cancer, admitting, “As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business,” although he quickly added, “though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be ‘me.’” And that is the thing: Even a staunch atheist such as me—one who, as an evidentialist, has tried to look at the evidence objectively and, in so doing, has had his non-belief repeatedly reaffirmed—is not immune to occasional frightful thoughts of being consigned to an eternity of agonizing punishment in hellfire.

Christian writers of decades and centuries past have seemed to take an almost perversely sadistic glee in describing the various tortures, torments, agonies and excruciations of hell; gospel descriptions about weeping and gnashing of teeth seem the very picture of restraint compared to, say, the fetishistic torture-porn that is Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” When one was formerly a Christian believer—and, again, remains ensnared in a Jesus-saturated culture and possesses a family that regularly discusses dead loved ones’ reunion with other deceased relatives in heaven—this has power. When others warn one about the dark fate sure to befall his sinful soul, it is hard not to harbor a bit of fright and even, in those most pathetic moments, fear that can be quite acute.

In earthly life, it is perfectly natural to fear having a cavity filled by the dentist due to the few moments of pain it might involve. And, it is standard practice to avoid relatively minor pains by taking protective action, such as by wearing oven mitts so as not to burn one’s fingertips. I know that, speaking personally, I avoid pain at all costs, sometimes depriving myself of things that might be enjoyable or exciting simply because the cost-benefit analysis contains too high a risk of pain occurring. This is to say, I anticipate the possibility (not even necessarily the probability) of pain and, as a result, modify my behavior to bring that possibility down to effectively zero. But, were hell actually to exist, and were it, in the slightest, to resemble Jonathan Edwards’ horrific imaginings, the pain in store for the sinning hordes would shrink every torment with which we are familiar to nothingness. Surely, then, it would make sense for me—if not now, then before I expire—to return to Christianity and repent my atheistic agitation, yes?

No, no, a thousand times no. I am an evidentialist not because I idolize this scientist or that philosopher…not because others easily lead me and I fall under influence…but, rather, because I truly believe the evidentialist principle is the best way to approximate truth. And, no matter what my relatives believe or what a large majority of Americans hold as true, I do not believe the Christian revelation; the evidence, where sought, is often nonexistent and, where actually found, is ultimately insufficient. I do not believe the Old Testament recounts actual events, nor do I believe in Jesus’ miraculous resurrection, nor do I believe that humans have souls, much less that these immaterial souls go to an immaterial place following corporeal death. This leaves me, then, with but a single motivating factor to reconvert to Christianity: fear of terrible punishment for failing to have done so.

I do not believe in any gods, but I especially do not believe—indeed, would consider it insulting to believe—in a god who looks favorably upon a person whose sole motivating factor in following the deity is craven, pathetic, self-serving fear of punishment. I find it inconceivable that a supposed glorified creator of the universe—a being who, if existent, would be the author of all creation and separator of the righteous from the wicked—would be pleased with a throng of followers who do not love him or revere him or, indeed, even really believe in him, but only choose to prostrate themselves before him because of their pusillanimous terror. I cannot guarantee that, moments before my death, I will not repent of my atheism and turn skyward desperately, but, as Hitchens observed, such would be a humiliation: both for me and for any supposed god.

Given the centrality of the evidentialist principle to my reasoning, it is worthwhile to parse the actual statement a bit. What is “evidence,” first of all? According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, “evidence” is anything that helps to prove that something is or is not true. Typically, when I am asked to define the word, I say something along the lines of, “Evidence refers to the relevant facts pertaining to any matter of controversy, uncertainty or dispute.” Thus, following my First Principle, if there is a dispute about a matter for which an actual answer exists—for example, either Harry did kill Sally, or Harry did not—weighing relevant facts is the most reliable method to approximate the correct answer. The word “approximate” also appears in my statement of evidentialism, and this is because, even though recourse to evidence has proven repeatedly to be our best tool for discovering truth (i.e., in the legal/judicial world, in medical settings, in day-to-day life, etc.), it is not an infallible tool; we, as mere evolved creatures with large and advanced brains, cannot hope to possess absolute certainty. We are forced to settle for provisional truths in which our level of confidence is commensurate with the available evidence.

The last part of my statement of evidentialism refers to “the world of experience,” as distinct from a hypothetical “world of actuality” to which, for whatever reason, I might not have access. Think of it this way: For Dr. Cliff Huxtable, the main character in “The Cosby Show,” the world of that show was his actual world. Dr. Cliff Huxtable does not live in our world; rather, he is a character who exists only in the world of the television program. In an analogous way, consider the possibility that, in actuality, I am a brain in a vat; some kind of super-intelligence has merely created the illusion that I exist as a free-roaming primate when, in fact, I am just a brain soaking in a vat. Because this fact, presumably, is inaccessible to me in the illusion in which I live, I could gather no evidence of this “actual world” to which I have no access. By the same token, though, an “actual world” from which my consciousness is permanently isolated and of which I have no evidence might as well not exist at all; its existence is indistinguishable from its non-existence and, thus, inconsequential. The only world about which I care—the only world consequential to me and, thus, worthy of interrogation—is the one in which I find myself: that being, the world of experience.

What, then, is so persuasive about evidentialism as a First Principle, anyway? Why, to use the eyeglass-lens analogy, is my vision so much better with evidentialism than with, say, a First Principle centered on biblical Christianity? As hinted at earlier, evidence can easily be adduced in support of evidence's pervasive utility in approximating truth, thus making evidentialism a self-subsisting, rather than self-annihilating, First Principle. Criminal justice systems that are driven by evidence gathering and examination are clearly much more likely to zero-in on criminals than are systems in which evidence is shunted aside when trying to determine guilt. In the medical field, those doctors who ascertain what symptoms a patient manifests (gather symptomatic evidence) before reaching conclusions about what afflicts that patient are clearly much more likely to diagnose the illness correctly than are doctors who gather no symptomatic evidence. And, inarguably, in nearly every person's everyday life, he or she constantly gathers, and acts upon, evidence. For example, when, upon seeing brake lights illuminate in front of us, we apply our own brakes, having realized that the evidence of the brake lights indicates the car in front of us is slowing. Stated simply: Evidence works.

There are some who mischaracterize me as a doctrinaire materialist or naturalist...as a committed and unshakeable atheist or physicalist. In fact, though, the only commitment I make—the only notion to which I have presuppositionally wedded myself—is to the validity of evidentialism as First Principle. I am, in ascending order of importance, an atheist, a naturalist and a nihilist, and I am all of these things as a result of my evidentialism; theoretically, all three of those descriptors could change—indeed, could be negated entirely—if the evidence were contrary. That is why the oft-heard charge that, through my presuppositions, I have ruled out biblical Christianity rings utterly hollow. Biblical Christianity is, in principle, fully compatible with evidentialism. This is demonstrated even within the bible—in 1 Kings 18, for example—leading Jaco Gericke, in his contribution to the book The End of Christianity, to note that, presumably, Christians have confected their own reasons “why these things no longer happen and why no philosopher of religion will agree to a contest on Mount Carmel.”

I would be foolish, indeed, to reject supernaturalism entirely if the world looked fundamentally different from how it actually looks. For instance, suppose that true, pious Christian believers were able to resuscitate the dead, a feat that nobody of any other religion—and no impious, casual Christian—could ever do. Surely, if such a thing were actually the case, it would be meaningful, and it would be difficult to maintain a purely naturalistic stance. Consider also a hypothetical possibility raised by Richard Carrier, who, in his extended essay on why he is not a Christian, envisages true Christian bibles that are all indestructible, unalterable and self-translating. It might be a bit primitive for one to shout, “Lo, a miracle!” in response to such a phenomenon—surely, a natural explanation might exist, however unlikely—but any evidentialist would have no choice but to reweigh the odds of the supernatural existing. I am a naturalist because, in interrogating the world of experience, I find no compelling evidence for the supernatural, and no need for recourse to it. In the same way, I am an atheist because I have discovered no persuasive evidence for gods, and no need to appeal to them. Finally, and most importantly, I am a nihilist because, given the current evidence, the cosmos, and everything in it, seems to be ultimately meaningless, purposeless and lacking objective value.

Although, as noted, “nihilist” is the most important appellation that I apply to myself, it is worthwhile to explain, especially given my relentless criticism of the religion, exactly why I reject biblical Christianity and embrace atheism. The reasons are numerous and include the flood—the word just seems right—of absurd claims contained within the bible's pages (not absurd in the sense of being self-contradictory but, rather, in the sense of failing utterly to comport with the world of experience as we all collectively know it), the text's seeming incompatibility with Darwinian evolution and a 13.7 billion-year-old universe, prayer's uselessness in actually effecting desired results, people's pronounced tendency to embrace the religion of their parents and peers, and the problem of statistical improbability regarding a hugely complex being—god—simply existing without a satisfactory explanation of origins. There are, however, three principal reasons I reject Christianity, each of which is probably sufficient to falsify the faith and that, when taken collectively, ring its unmistakable death knell for all but the most presuppositionally committed.

Why, then, am I not a Christian? First, because god is absent or, at the least, silent. In essence, those of the Christian faith proclaim that our universe, and all that is part of it, is in the hands of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator deity who takes a personal interest in human affairs. It is completely inexplicable, then, that this creator deity would be entirely undetectable and utterly absent from day-to-day life. If one reads the bible, one finds an active, present, immediate god; moreover, one finds copious miracles and prodigies that are unlike anything with which we are familiar.

The reliably perceptive David Hume, in Of Miracles, writes:

It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations ... When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole frame of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner, from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgements, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvelous ...

Hume rightly adds, "It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days."

Why would a god who, in barbarous and ignorant times, was so clear, present and active suddenly, upon the emergence of a scientific understanding of the natural order, become a silent, inert sluggard whose presence could only be discerned in the most obscure, skepticism-baiting ways? Where are the miracles and prodigies for our scientific age? Because god, if existent, would be a do-nothing layabout, Christianity is falsified.

Second, the bible, despite the fact it is purported to be inspired by god himself, wallows in pitiable prescientific primitivism and yawn-inducing mundanity. Certainly, considering its alleged divine inspiration, one might expect the bible to be full of dazzlingly specific information of which no one had been previously aware. In light of its purported inspiration, one might expect the pinnacle of all intellectual achievement. This is not so. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, writes, “[The bible] does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.” There is nothing about the actual age or size of our universe. There is nothing about the germ theory of disease, heliocentric theory of the solar system or atomic theory of matter. Earth's vast geography is shrunk down to claustrophobically local levels. It is not even clear from the bible whether the creator of our universe is aware of Australia. The bible is not a product of divine inspiration but, rather, lamentable ancient ignorance.

How, Christopher Hitchens asks in god is not Great, can Genesis be proven the mundane work of ignorant humans in merely a paragraph? He writes:

Because man is given “dominion” over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia—the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new “Eden”—was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had “dominion” over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.

The bible's mundanity belies the claim of divine inspiration, thus proving Christianity false.

Third, I am not a Christian because worship of Yahweh as the singular creator deity did not arise independently among numerous geographically isolated populations. Any delusional belief system, if designed with sufficient cleverness, has the potential to “catch fire,” as it were, and spread pervasively throughout our species. Much less easily explained, however, would be for the same delusional belief system to arise independently—as though through universal identical revelation—in many different places. Imagine if, around 2000 BCE, worship of Yahweh had arisen, nearly simultaneously, in the Middle East, China, the Americas and central Africa. What would the odds have been of an identical god character—with distinctive quirks, commandments, preferences and fetishes—having been invented by completely different populations? They seem infinitesimal. There is, however, no evidence of Yahweh-worship arising independently among geographically isolated groups. However spiritual they might previously have been, primitive populations began to worship Yahweh specifically when believers in Yahweh arrived at their shores: The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity's message, therefore, is spread by the veritable Pony Express method of human beings.

Christopher Hitchens, in god is not Great, writes, “One recalls the question that was asked by the Chinese when the first Christian missionaries made their appearance. If god has revealed himself, how is it that he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing the Chinese?” Whatever deities might have haunted Chinese history, none was distinguishably Yahweh. The failure of god to reveal himself independently to several geographically isolated populations, then, also falsifies Christianity.

As noted earlier, though, I am not principally defined as an atheist or a non-Christian but, rather, as a nihilist, particularly a moral nihilist and an existential nihilist. As explained on Wikipedia, moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. Indeed, moral nihilists reject the very concepts of objective good and evil...right and wrong...righteous and wicked as pertains to the actual, existent world. Wikipedia defines existential nihilism as the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. Broadened a bit, existential nihilism refers to the belief that the universe is meaningless and purposeless, as is its every component. On this view, humanity, for instance, is to the universe as a single grain of sand on a beach is to the Earth. The entire species could go extinct in an enormous nuclear blast—indeed, the Sun could incinerate the entire solar system, or the Milky Way could vanish—and the universe would not take the slightest notice, nor would the event have the faintest objective meaning. And, as previously explained, my nihilism, both moral and existential, directly results from my evidentialist First Principle.

The natural starting point is with existential nihilism, because, in my view, moral nihilism follows quite directly therefrom. The foundational background knowledge with which I approach the issue includes, but is not limited to, the fact of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, the fact of an old universe (about 13.7 billion years) and an old Earth (following some 9 billion years later), and the utter absence of compelling evidence for the veracity of religious revelation, including that of Christianity. The cumulative discoveries of science over the past two centuries have confirmed that all living creatures on this planet share common ancestry. That is, there is a single Darwinian tree of life, of which every species, including human beings, is part. Although different species possess different traits—some have eight legs and some have large brains, some have antennae and some can fly—every variety of creature is fundamentally connected through common Darwinian ancestry.

With respect to the cosmos, we live in a universe whose size and age exceeds man's ability to imagine adequately. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is a hugely vast cluster of stars and their planetary systems. The Milky Way contains roughly 200 billion stars, of which our Sun—inside which 1 million Earths could fit—is merely an ordinary one. Our solar system is only a speck as a component of the Milky Way, which is but one insignificant galaxy among perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Big Bang is estimated to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago, with Earth's formation following long after (again, 4.54 billion years ago). Perspective can be gained by putting this in the context of a calendar year: Imagine that the instant of the Big Bang equates to the stroke of midnight on January 1, and the present day equates to precisely midnight on the following January 1. On this imagining, Homo sapiens sapiens would appear on the scene seven-and-a-half minutes to midnight on December 31. It is surprising that man, according to Christianity, is made in the image of god and is the object of god's special attention and love, but then does not appear for aeons and aeons in a universe in which humans are confined to the tiniest conceivable speck of available space.

In the absence of compelling evidence for a god, and lacking persuasive evidence to support any religion, I have provisionally concluded that we are alone in the universe: not alone in the sense of there being no extraterrestrial life but, instead, in the sense of being unsupervised and uncared for. Sure, we, as human beings, care for one another, particularly for family members, friends and others for whom we have developed feelings. But, in a quite literal sense, we—and all creatures—are composed of the same dumb “stuff” that also composes inanimate objects, like rocks and concrete. The molecules of which we are constructed are made of atoms whose origins trace to the crucibles that were the cores of high-mass stars, whose chemical contents exploded into the galaxy aeons ago. We are the universe become conscious, a thought that, while exhilarating, is also humbling. We, like rocks, are a mere atomic assemblage—albeit, yes, a conscious one—whose existence is accidental and, thus, objectively purposeless. We certainly can imbue our lives with personal, subjective meaning, and we can assign personal, subjective value to those we love, but none of those things can be considered an actual fact: not in the same way the speed of light in vacuum can be so considered.

“Value” is a concept that requires an assigner or assessor. As noted, one atomic assemblage can assign value to another one, but, inasmuch as any living creature is destined to die—and, in the grand cosmic scope, to do so almost immediately—any value assignment is ephemeral: not enduring...factual...objective. On the universal scale, none of us matters and none of us is significant, thus undercutting the consequentiality of any value assessment any of us might assign. Essentially, all of this is to say that if one meaningless, insignificant thing declares another meaningless, insignificant thing important to it, that importance, itself, is meaningless and insignificant by extension, since importance cannot come from unimportance, nor the meaningful from the meaningless.

It is with all of this in mind that I proffer moral nihilism. To call an action—any action—righteous or wicked is to imply that the action is a significant one and, moreover, either comports with or transgresses an established moral code. Again, though, there is no reason to believe that significance can arise from insignificance, making it quite difficult to say that any action undertaken by any human has a moral dimension. To whom might human actions matter? To other humans? That is to suggest, to other accidental atomic assemblages whose vanishingly brief existence will ultimately come to nothing? Well, on the scale of the universe, so what? The question also arises of against whose moral code human behavior might transgress. In the absence of god, there is no moral code handed down from on high. Those who subscribe to the superstition of actual, objective morality must be appealing to some source of right and wrong....

There is, of course, the natural moral framework inculcated by Darwinian evolution, which essentially is a utilitarian code intended to permit survival and, most importantly, gene propagation. Richard Dawkins, in The Greatest Show on Earth, gives an illuminating explication of natural selection, writing, “It is all about the survival of self-replicating instructions for self-replication.” He continues, “Viruses and tigers are both built by coded instructions whose ultimate message is, like a computer virus, ‘Duplicate me.’ In the case of the cold virus, the instruction is executed rather directly. A tiger’s DNA is also a ‘duplicate me’ program, but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger’s DNA says, ‘Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.’” This is whence objective, prescriptive morality is meant to come? The whole purpose of Darwinian evolution, as Dawkins writes, is gene propagation. There is no right or wrong...no virtue or wickedness...just cool, unfeeling, ruthless efficiency. A human being is no less a fantastically large digression than a tiger is; we just like to enchant our existence with delusions of meaningfulness.

The evidence is unmistakable: There are no gods, no revealed religion comports with reality, human existence is wholly accidental, no human being—either singularly or as a collective—has any enduring meaning or value, and morality is but a useful illusion inculcated into us by Darwinian means in order that our genes might be more effectively propagated. This is simultaneously diminishing and liberating, much as the realization that we are organic products of the universe—stardust from long-dead worlds—is at once humbling and exhilarating. We live in a world with no “shoulds” and no “oughts”...no “shouldn'ts” and no “ought nots.” None of it matters, and none shall be remembered. One might as well have fun—if one chooses, that is—because, in the last analysis, one is only answerable to oneself.

Consider this, from William Lane Craig, in Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics:

“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”

Additionally, consider this, from Answers in Genesis, the pseudoscientific creationist website:

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.”

(Taken from The AiG Statement of Faith, accessible here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith)

In light of the overwhelming importance of “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” to Christians of a particularly devout nature, I cannot help but wonder what, exactly, could conceivably convince them that their beliefs are erroneous and that the bible, for all its poetry and rhetorical beauty, is a dusty collection of ancient mythology written by ignorant individuals for whom a wheelbarrow would be an exciting new technological development. In the spirit of probing this question more deeply, I present a brief thought experiment below.

Anybody who reads the bible objectively—without an agenda or an apologetics-related motivation—will admit that its authors believed the Earth was flat and still, with the heavens positioned above it, and with the Sun, moon and stars subservient to, and moving with respect to, it. Although I do not think anybody of intellectual goodwill could plausibly deny this, I nevertheless will provide a couple of passages to underscore the point.

“He commands the sun, and it does not rise;

He seals off the stars;”

Job 9:7 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, look at the celestial body to which the command is directed. The rising and setting of the Sun each day is based upon our movement with respect to it, and yet, in the bible, god commands not the Earth to stop spinning on its axis but, instead, the Sun not to rise.

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,

And the wicked be shaken out of it?”

Job 38:12-13 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, it is rather difficult to imagine taking hold of an oblate spheroid from its “ends” to remove, via shaking, the wicked therefrom.

Do not focus too much attention on the quoted passages above, though, because I have no doubt whatsoever that committed Christians have already discovered “fixes” to such problematic passages (of which there were nearly innumerably many I could have chosen). The thought experiment is hypothetical in nature.

Suppose that, instead of its actual wording, Job 38:12-13 were phrased differently:

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of this flat earth,

And the wicked be shaken off of its plane?”

For purposes of this experiment, presume that the rest of the bible is precisely as it actually is and, additionally, grant that the scientific evidence relating to astronomy, cosmology, geology, etc. is exactly as it actually is. When confronted with my revised version of Job 38:12-13, what would you conclude?

(a) That the passage, sometime over the years, became corrupted and, thus, lost its intended meaning? (For this experiment, presume that all extant witnesses have my revised wording, and none has the wording as it exists in the real world.)

(b) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, but that the author's mistake does not undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible?

(c) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, and that the author's mistake does undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible? (Please specify the extent to which the bible's credibility and, thus, your faith beliefs would be injured.)

(d) That the passage did not become corrupted and that the author of The Book of Job did not make a mistake because, in fact, astronomic, cosmological and geologic evidence notwithstanding, the Earth is indeed flat and similar to a plane?

I seek to get to the root of how deep—and, indeed, how unshakable—this abiding faith in “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” truly is.

And, as a quick add on, here is another thought experiment to which I would greatly appreciate an answer. Suppose that a foolproof time machine were invented, to which you and I gained access. Further, suppose that we took the time machine to 30 CE (replace the year if you disagree with the approximation) and set the location to be Jesus' tomb. Now, suppose that we bore witness to the crucifixion and subsequent entombment in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. Finally, suppose we watched for hours, stretching into days, and there was no resurrection. What would you conclude?

(a) That our presence affected the outcome and, thus, we prevented the resurrection?

(b) That, despite our 24/7 monitoring, which, for the thought experiment, we can presume was flawless, Jesus in fact was resurrected but we missed it?

(c) That, just maybe, Jesus was not resurrected after all, making Christianity false?

Consider this, from William Lane Craig, in Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics:

“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”

Additionally, consider this, from Answers in Genesis, the pseudoscientific creationist website:

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.”

(Taken from The AiG Statement of Faith, accessible here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith)

In light of the overwhelming importance of “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” to Christians of a particularly devout nature, I cannot help but wonder what, exactly, could conceivably convince them that their beliefs are erroneous and that the bible, for all its poetry and rhetorical beauty, is a dusty collection of ancient mythology written by ignorant individuals for whom a wheelbarrow would be an exciting new technological development. In the spirit of probing this question more deeply, I present a brief thought experiment below.

Anybody who reads the bible objectively—without an agenda or an apologetics-related motivation—will admit that its authors believed the Earth was flat and still, with the heavens positioned above it, and with the Sun, moon and stars subservient to, and moving with respect to, it. Although I do not think anybody of intellectual goodwill could plausibly deny this, I nevertheless will provide a couple of passages to underscore the point.

“He commands the sun, and it does not rise;

He seals off the stars;”

Job 9:7 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, look at the celestial body to which the command is directed. The rising and setting of the Sun each day is based upon our movement with respect to it, and yet, in the bible, god commands not the Earth to stop spinning on its axis but, instead, the Sun not to rise.

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,

And the wicked be shaken out of it?”

Job 38:12-13 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, it is rather difficult to imagine taking hold of an oblate spheroid from its “ends” to remove, via shaking, the wicked therefrom.

Do not focus too much attention on the quoted passages above, though, because I have no doubt whatsoever that committed Christians have already discovered “fixes” to such problematic passages (of which there were nearly innumerably many I could have chosen). The thought experiment is hypothetical in nature.

Suppose that, instead of its actual wording, Job 38:12-13 were phrased differently:

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of this flat earth,

And the wicked be shaken off of its plane?”

For purposes of this experiment, presume that the rest of the bible is precisely as it actually is and, additionally, grant that the scientific evidence relating to astronomy, cosmology, geology, etc. is exactly as it actually is. When confronted with my revised version of Job 38:12-13, what would you conclude?

(a) That the passage, sometime over the years, became corrupted and, thus, lost its intended meaning? (For this experiment, presume that all extant witnesses have my revised wording, and none has the wording as it exists in the real world.)

(b) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, but that the author's mistake does not undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible?

(c) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, and that the author's mistake does undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible? (Please specify the extent to which the bible's credibility and, thus, your faith beliefs would be injured.)

(d) That the passage did not become corrupted and that the author of The Book of Job did not make a mistake because, in fact, astronomic, cosmological and geologic evidence notwithstanding, the Earth is indeed flat and similar to a plane?

I seek to get to the root of how deep—and, indeed, how unshakable—this abiding faith in “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” truly is.

And, as a quick add on, here is another thought experiment to which I would greatly appreciate an answer. Suppose that a foolproof time machine were invented, to which you and I gained access. Further, suppose that we took the time machine to 30 CE (replace the year if you disagree with the approximation) and set the location to be Jesus' tomb. Now, suppose that we bore witness to the crucifixion and subsequent entombment in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. Finally, suppose we watched for hours, stretching into days, and there was no resurrection. What would you conclude?

(a) That our presence affected the outcome and, thus, we prevented the resurrection?

(b) That, despite our 24/7 monitoring, which, for the thought experiment, we can presume was flawless, Jesus in fact was resurrected but we missed it?

(c) That, just maybe, Jesus was not resurrected after all, making Christianity false?

Humankind's pronounced predisposition to self-importance, bordering on haughty arrogance, leaves me with some combination of bafflement at our childlike taste for palatable delusion, frustration with our seeming inability to reason beyond it and weary resignation to our current solipsistic (in the sense of being characterized by extreme egocentrism) stance. Certainly, almost every successive discovery that is won through diligent scientific effort bespeaks the wondrousness of the world as we know it and the humbling majesty of the small planet on which we live. One need only consult the exciting developments emerging in disciplines ranging from biology to cosmology, chemistry to astrophysics, and paleontology to geophysics. However, our compounding and expanding scientific understanding only serves to testify to a universe far larger and grander than we will ever experience, and one in which we play such an infinitesimal role that we charitably could be said to have essentially no significance.

As a regular reader of my writing might expect, I believe the institution of religion is the principal cause of the delusive idea that humans, either as individuals or as a species, hold some special significance. And, for clarity, I speak not only of significance exceeding that of other animals but, in fact, of any cosmic-scale significance whatsoever. From extremely early childhood, those of us raised with religious inculcation are told that we are children of god, created in his glorious image, and cared for and loved by him. Moreover, we are told that god is deeply concerned with our thoughts and actions, down to the trivial and the mundane, and that he is comprehensively aware of what we, as individuals, do. If the intellectual cancer of creationism is grafted onto, or simply replaces, our scientific education, we might well be led to believe that the universe, our planet in it and we on that planet were literally and supernaturally created, making us, by extension, godly objects.

All of this is to say that, in youth, our intellectual development is so minimal that we have no defense against attractive delusion that is presented as fact by those whom we trust. If, in childhood, the fangs of religious indoctrination are plunged deeply into our bodies, pumping their unique brand of sweet-smelling toxin, we are likely to grow to be adults whose brains are hopelessly addled by nonsense. Recognizing religion as the robust, well-adapted phenomenon that it is, one cannot help but to approach it in Darwinian fashion in an attempt to understand why it is so pervasive. That religion, in general, promises an afterlife following earthly death certainly contributes to its appeal, inasmuch as the prospect of nonexistence seems to frighten and disturb most of us. In religion, many people also find not only solace and comfort but meaning and inspiration, too. For these people, god and religion, to some extent, provide life with an overarching purpose, without which, presumably, they would feel adrift. Religion also feeds into our innate egocentrism, inasmuch as many of us like to feel loved (especially by a supreme being!) and to believe that our actions, for better or worse, reverberate beyond our minuscule little sphere.

Although religion might well be the vehicle through which human self-importance most frequently reveals itself, and I certainly would contend that it exacerbates and magnifies whatever predisposition toward egocentrism people might have, it definitely is not the only way in which this mental distortion becomes manifest. And I would be dishonest to say that I, myself, do not fall victim frequently to variants of this selfsame delusion. I suffer from an extreme susceptibility to the rose-colored visions of pure, undying romance that have permeated cinema for decades and that are so frequently echoed in sappy love songs, causing me to be sucked into ideas such as "soul mates." By that, I mean two people who, among the nearly 7 billion who populate this planet, are romantically meant for each other to the exclusion of all other possible couplings. The problem with such ideas is the unanswered, and seemingly unanswerable, question: "Meant for each other" by whom? And even granting the possibility that there were an individual, among the billions of people on our planet, for whom you were personally meant, it seems rather silly to think that you would find that individual.

And let us not neglect to mention those old canards that it is sometimes just a person's "time to go" or that, if something happens, "it was meant to." One sometimes hears things similar to the former when a tragedy befalls somebody, such as, for instance, when a plane crash kills a happy young couple. Perhaps more to the point, somebody might say it was a young daredevil's "time to go" if he were to plunge to his death while mountain climbing. The apparent implication of this is that, if the daredevil were to have stayed home and watched television that day, some other accident would have offed him. Turning to the latter phrase, "it was meant to happen," I view it largely as a mental illusion one conjures to absolve oneself of blame and emancipate oneself from regret over an unwelcome development in one's life. That is, it involves believing that something was preordained, thereby allowing one to embrace the comforting notion that, no matter what choices had been made, the outcome would have been the same. The problems here are identical to the one previously identified: If one has a "time to go," by whom is it determined? If something "was meant to happen," to whom can we credit the planning?

These generally secular forms of self-importance might seem meaningfully different from those characterizing religious practice. For instance, freethinkers recognize that prayer is a useless exercise that is undertaken by those who, in a fit of childish delusion, believe they can effect change in the real world by falling to their knees and murmuring to themselves, all the while thinking they are communicating with the creator of the universe. However, whether secular or religious, all variants tie together inasmuch as they are part of a fallacious-idea web wherein humans are significant, subjects of a plan, qualitatively different from other life forms and imbued with a nebulous "special something." It seems that there is insufficiently abundant comfort, purpose, meaning, ego stroking and reassurance in the harsh light of science, leading many to crawl back to the cool, dark territory of unreason, like bugs beneath a stone.

From what, exactly, does the majority seek comfort? I argue that the answer is our proper place in a vast universe. The age of the universe--of which our solar system (as well as our entire galaxy) is the tiniest sliver--is 13.75 billion years, with an uncertainty of 0.17 billion years. The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, with an uncertainty of one percent. Modern forms of Homo sapiens first emerged on the scene about 195,000 years ago. Looking at these dates in context, we can say that humanlike creatures have been around less than one-hundredth of one percent of Earth's natural history. With a clearheaded comprehension of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, we understand that human beings happen to have evolved. We certainly were not bound to evolve, nor is evolution an efficacious stepladder that was designed to reach the heights of humankind, nor is humankind the "final product" toward which everything has been building. Furthermore, Darwinian evolution knows of only one Tree of Life, and we exist as part of, rather than standing apart from, that multiply branched tree.

Finally, we also know that that which lives eventually will die and, despite a great deal of wishful thinking of both an explicitly religious and vaguely spiritual nature, there is literally no persuasive evidence to support the contention of an afterlife. The evidence, it turns out, is to the contrary. In God: The Failed Hypothesis--How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, Victor Stenger writes, "We have seen that neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts and, indeed, our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. So this would seem to say that when our brains die, we die." Perhaps it is upsetting to accept, but the simple fact remains that each of us will die. There will come a day, whether distant or close at hand, when each of us will be but a cold, lifeless body, lying in a morgue or funeral parlor, or on a medical examiner's slab. Makeup and powder will be applied to our faces, our best clothes will be draped on our corpses and we will be injected with chemicals to forestall the process through which each of us will decompose...until we become nothing at all.

If one adheres to Christian dogma, quite a bit of the preceding discussion might be questioned or flatly denied. I recognize that, if one is a bible-believing Christian, one is fully entitled, if not outright obligated, to believe in the intrinsic specialness of humankind and our species' cosmic, enduring importance. That one's false superstition compels such beliefs, though, does not prevent me from pointing out that Christianity amplifies, distorts and exacerbates delusive self-importance, a condition that is well recognized if only partially understood. I see no particular reason to relitigate all the issues that I, and many others, have already discussed, such as the ludicrousness of prayer, the many frailties of Christianity and the profound weakness of the design hypothesis, but I do think it is worthwhile to reiterate the principal reason why I am not, and intellectually cannot be, a Christian. Quite simply, to subscribe to Christianity, one must believe that a god who, in barbarous and ignorant times, was eminently clear, present and active suddenly, upon the emergence of a scientific understanding of the natural order, became a silent, inert sluggard whose presence can only be discerned in the most obscure, skepticism-baiting ways. The Israelites had precious little need for abstruse philosophical prestidigitation like the Transcendental Argument.

Whether it is the seemingly endless succession of people predicting the end of the world in their puny, insignificant lifetimes, the thoroughly irrational masses who are convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime before they, themselves, would die off, or the people who foolishly pretend that Earth holds a place of significance in an observable universe that is estimated to measure 93 billion light-years in diameter, humans habitually betray a breathtaking ego that is completely unwarranted by the evidence. If one wishes to think and, as a result, behave in accordance with truth (as best as it has been currently ascertained), one should recognize that, qualitatively, we are no different from any other evolved creature, our current perch atop the animal kingdom notwithstanding. And if one requires meaning of some kind to persist in life, one must invent such meaning for oneself.

Because just as surely as there is no objective, prescriptive moral code weaved into the fabric of the cosmos, nor any god above, below or anywhere else to love, supervise, create or punish, there is no purpose to life, to humans, or to you or to me apart from whichever one we invent. And as much as we might like to believe we are a grand, towering thing of a sort that only a deity could assemble, the truth is contrary: We are the accidental product, among millions and millions of others, of a Darwinian trial-and-error process. Most importantly, the universe did not notice our arrival and does not notice our persistence; it will not notice our eventual, inevitable extinction and shall not remember our follies.

And so, down the rabbit hole we go, looking at Earth not as an extremely ancient planet whose antiquity is confirmed by several converging lines of evidence but, rather, as a baby planet whose considerable biodiversity can be entirely explained within a several-thousand-year history. Yes, now we must look at Earth as the backyard garden of the Creator. But what kind of a Creator? Looking at the available evidence, I shall explain why we can conclude such a Creator is (1) a devious being, who wishes to trick humans into believing Earth is extremely ancient and the species have an evolutionary history, (2) remarkably odd, because the distribution of species on Earth, if consciously arranged, speaks to an extraordinarily queer mind, (3) peerlessly wasteful, given the presence of nonfunctional pseudogenes, and (4) idiotic, as evidenced by the utterly incompetent design that can be found throughout the creation, in humans as well as other species.

The majority of my material, as well as my initial inspiration, comes from The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, and Why Evolution is True, by Jerry A. Coyne. When I use either author’s exact words, I shall quote him directly; if, however, I simply summarize a discussion in either text, I might not make a specific citation. Thus, let it be clear that Dawkins and Coyne’s fertile minds contributed invaluably to the whole of this piece.

First, then, surveying the evidence at our disposal, we can be certain that the Creator is devious, deliberately setting out to create a false impression of Earth’s antiquity and evolution’s occurrence. The first way in which this characteristic manifests itself is in the theory of plate tectonics, a geological theory that states the lithosphere of the Earth is divided into a small number of plates that float on and travel independently over the mantle. We now understand that the continents have not always existed as we currently know them. For example, Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent encompassing our present South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica. Gondwana broke up gradually, in stages.

Our principal interest is when Africa and South America began breaking apart, which, according to current scientific thinking, was about 140 million years ago. The two continents are now separated by some 3000 miles, with the speed of separation being a couple of inches per year. If, however, Earth is actually quite young—merely several thousand years old—and the product of a Creator, such a snail-like speed would not be nearly enough to separate the continents to their current distance. Indeed, if, as some have proposed, Gondwana broke up during the Noachian flood, the continents would positively have had to hurtle away from each other. Because the speed of separation can be measured, and it is remarkably slow, we can be confident that any Creator who separated the continents at a very quick speed sometime in the last few thousand years is trying to deceive us into believing Earth is ancient. The Creator is deceptive.

The Creator’s trickster tendencies are also apparent in our radioactive clocks. Radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks (rocks formed by magma cooling down and becoming solid) are used for dating purposes, because the isotopes decay at a constant rate. It is important to note that there are several radioactive isotopes scientists use, and they often co-exist within the same rocks. The decay rate used is typically the half-life, that being how long it takes for half of the unstable isotope present to decay to something stable (to go from 100 to 50, 50 to 25 and so forth). Carbon-14 decays to Nitrogen-14; its half-life is 5730 years. Uranium-238 decays to Lead-206; its half-life is 4.5 billion years. Uranium-235 decays to Lead-207; its half-life is 704 million years. Other unstable isotopes include Potassium-40, Thorium-232, Rubidium-87 and Samarium-147. Importantly, as Jerry Coyne writes, “Several radioisotopes usually occur together, so the dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariably agree.”

This is important because, with our half-life figures calibrated, we can use radioactive clocks to converge on an approximation of Earth’s age. In fact, scientists have done just that. Richard Dawkins writes, “The currently agreed age of 4.6 billion years is the estimate upon which several different clocks converge.” This fact surely means the Creator—who created Earth merely several thousand years ago—is devious beyond compare. Not only did he change the half-life figures of every radioactive isotope that we use for historical dating, but he also changed them in such a way that each one converges on the same ancient age—4.6 billion years—for Earth! To be sure, for every clock to converge on, say, 6000 years, every half-life would have to be tweaked differently.

Dawkins makes this point: “Bear in mind the huge differences in timescales of the different clocks, and think of the amount of contrived and complicated fiddling with the laws of physics that would be needed in order to make all the clocks agree with each other, across the orders of magnitude, that the Earth is 6000 years old and not 4.6 billion!” To do such fiddling, thus making every radioactive isotope that we use all agree that Earth is 4.6 billion years old, attests to a Creator who deliberately attempts to trick humans undertaking scientific study. The Creator is devious.

This deviousness extends to evolution, which, clearly, the Creator wants scientists to accept; that is the only explanation for the fossil record. When we talk about “dating fossils,” what we nearly always mean is dating the rocks around which the fossils are found. This is where the geologic strata become important. The geologic strata (singular is “stratum”) are layers of rock, one on top of the other, with the oldest rocks the deepest down and the youngest rocks the highest up. The scientific community refers to this layering as the geologic column, and it is extremely well evidenced. The salient point for our purposes here is that, when dating fossils (actually, the rocks around which fossils are found), they appear in a strict evolutionary order. When questioned by a creationist as to what observation could possibly disprove Darwinian evolution, the late J. B. S. Haldane famously answered, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!” On the evolutionary view, the Precambrian spans from Earth’s formation about 4.6 billion years ago to approximately 542 million years ago; rabbits are mammals, and the first mammals do not come onto the scene until about 250 million years ago. As Coyne writes, “Needless to say, no Precambrian rabbits, or any other anachronistic fossils, have ever been found.”

The complete absence of anachronistic fossils lends considerable credence to the evolutionary view. To reconcile it with a Creator, one absolutely must assume a devious trickster. Dawkins writes, “It is a fact that literally nothing that you could remotely call a mammal has ever been found in Devonian rock or in any older stratum. They are not just statistically rarer in Devonian than in later rocks. They literally never occur in rocks older than a certain date.” He continues, “There are literally no trilobites above Permian strata, literally no dinosaurs (except birds) above Cretaceous strata.” At the considerable risk of deceased equine flogging, Dawkins sums it up: “All the fossils that we have, and there are very very many indeed, occur, without a single authenticated exception, in the right temporal sequence.” How many dinosaur fossils have we found in the same rocks as Australopithecine fossils? Zero. How many zebra fossils have we found in the same rocks as trilobite fossils? Zero. How many anachronistic fossils have been authenticated? Zero. The only explanation is that the deceptive Creator is fudging the fossils to make Darwinian evolution an inescapable conclusion.

On creationism, the distribution of species on Earth makes very little sense, attesting to a Creator with an extremely odd mind, bordering on completely inscrutable. Nowhere is this sheer oddness more evident than in island biogeography. With respect to islands, there is an important distinction that is material to our discussion: the difference between continental islands and oceanic islands. Continental islands are those that once were connected to a continent but later became separated. An example would be Madagascar. Oceanic islands, by contrast, are those that never were part of a continent; islands of this variety arose from the seafloor. An example here would be St. Helena.

On a creationist theory positing a Creator who is not a weirdo, there is little reason to suppose there would be much difference vis-à-vis biogeography between continental and oceanic islands. However, the differences are dramatic, which has led many scientists to accept evolution and, in our case, for us to conclude the Creator is simply an odd duck. Coyne writes, “Oceanic islands are missing many types of native species that we see on both continents and continental islands. Take Hawaii, a tropical archipelago whose islands occupy about 6400 square miles, only slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts. While the islands are well stocked with native birds, plants, and insects, they completely lack native freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, and land mammals. Napoleon’s island of St. Helena and the archipelago of Juan Fernández lack these same groups, but still have plenty of endemic plants, birds, and insects. The Galápagos Islands do have a few native reptiles (land and marine iguanas, as well as the famous giant tortoises), but they too are missing native mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish. Over and over again, on the oceanic islands that dot the Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean, one sees a pattern of missing groups—more to the point, the same missing groups.”

It takes only a moment of thought to recognize that plants, birds, and insects and other arthropods “can colonize an oceanic island through long-distance dispersal.” By contrast, land mammals, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish would have extreme difficulty colonizing an oceanic island unless, for example, some reptiles made it onto a log that happened to “raft” onto one. The topic of island biogeography is rich, and a great deal more could be said, but it exceeds the scope of this paper. Suffice it to note that, on creationism, with anything but an extraordinarily queer Creator, we would not expect such differential biodiversity on continental versus oceanic islands.

The peculiarity with which the species are dispersed cannot be overstated, and Dawkins asks the questions as well as anyone does. He writes, “Why would all those marsupials—ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts—why would all those marsupials, but no placentals at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle—in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road? Why did the entire order Edentata (all twenty species of armadillo, including the extinct giant armadillo, all six species of sloth, including extinct giant sloths, and all four species of anteater) troop off unerringly for South America, leaving not a rack behind, leaving no hide nor hair nor armour plate of settlers somewhere along the way? Why were they joined by the entire infraorder of caviomorph rodents, including guinea pigs, agoutis, pacas, maras, capybaras, chinchillas and lots of others, a large group of characteristically South American rodents found nowhere else?” Dawkins notes that lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, and thus continues, “Did all thirty-seven and more species of lemur troop in a body down Noah’s gangplank and hightail it (literally in the case of the ringtail) for Madagascar, leaving not a single straggler by the wayside, anywhere throughout the length and breadth of Africa?” Once again, then, we have no choice but to conclude the Creator is profoundly odd.

The next two Creator characteristics can be discerned more briefly, and I shall do so to keep the information easily digestible. The third characteristic of a Creator is that he is peerlessly wasteful, and this fact is never more clear than in examining the pseudogene, which is defined as a sequence of DNA that is very similar to a normal gene but that has been altered slightly so that it is not expressed; by definition, they are incapable of producing a protein product. Coyne writes, “Virtually every species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about thirty thousand genes, for example, we humans carry more than two thousand pseudogenes. Our genome—and that of other species—are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes.” For what possible reason would the Creator litter the genome with pseudogenes—a gene that, by definition, does entirely nothing? Because, as I say, the Creator must be prodigal in the extreme. Perhaps shameless wastefulness is a virtue.

Finally, the evidence clearly shows that the Creator, far from being a designer of formidable intelligence, is rather idiotic. In so declaring, I am not referencing the mindless wastefulness of pseudogenes; rather, I refer to the shoddy engineering and craftsmanship of the species themselves. A classic example—indeed, it has been well mined by Darwinians—is the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals. Coyne writes, “Running from the brain to the larynx, this nerve helps us speak and swallow. The curious thing is that it is much longer than it needs to be. Rather than taking a direct route from the brain to the larynx, a distance of about a foot in humans, the nerve runs down into our chest, loops around the aorta and a ligament derived from an artery, and then travels back up (‘recurs’) to connect to the larynx. It winds up being three feet long. In giraffes the nerve takes a similar path, but one that runs all the way down that long neck and back up again: a distance fifteen feet longer than the direct route!” Of course, on an evolutionary view, this presents some evidence of common mammalian descent; on our creationist view, it simply reveals a Creator whose stupidity is reliable.

The examples I could mine in the vein of the Creator’s idiocy would fill a book—perhaps several. The vas deferens takes a similar nonsensical detour in its route from testis to penis. In his inimitable way, Dawkins writes, “It takes a ridiculous detour around the ureter, the pipe that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder. If this were designed, nobody could seriously deny that the designer had made a bad error.” Yet another example of idiocy comes in the form of goose bumps. In species with a full coat of hair, piloerection makes sense. If the creature is cold, it results in the erect hairs trapping air to create a layer of insulation. Additionally, if the creature is threatened, “puffing up” its body hair can create the impression that the animal is larger. In short, then, piloerection, though completely sensible for hair-covered animals, is utterly senseless in humans—the naked ape. It is as though the Creator, in a fit of idiocy, attached a steering wheel to a refrigerator. Thus, we can be assured that the Creator, responsible for humans and bats, dandelions and plesiosaurs, is formidably moronic.

Is this really what creationists seek? Do they really want a Creator who is devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic? We must go where the evidence takes us; we must look at the simple facts and draw our conclusions directly from them—we must never let the conclusion dictate the facts we choose to recognize. The facts that we find as we examine and analyze the natural order all lead directly to Darwinian evolution by natural selection. To make any creationism hypothesis work, we must (a) endow the Creator with numerous negative attributes that fundamentally contradict the holy books from which creationists lift their science and (b) flagrantly violate the principle of parsimony. Is the simplest, most parsimonious explanation for the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals really that the Creator’s idiocy was in full force when designing, for example, humans and giraffes? What about the geologic strata and the complete absence of anachronistic fossils? What about the radioactive clocks? Did the Creator really tinker with all the half-life values, making them all converge on a fictitious ancient age for Earth?

Some creationist worries are legitimate. On evolution, humans indeed are just another species of animal. Knowing our place in the single tree of life robs us of our specialness, to some considerable extent. It also undermines objective morality. A polar bear might eat its own young. Do concepts of “moral” or “immoral” apply to that situation? If not, why would such concepts apply to humans, who are a twig on the tree of life just as much as polar bears are? Natural selection might have favored “moral instincts,” but such inclinations are hardly objective or prescriptive in any conventional sense. Evolution provides no morality-oriented “ought to” or “ought not to” as far as behavior.

More than anything else, evolution puts us in our place. We are just another species of animal. One day we shall go extinct. Our universe shall not miss us—at least, not any more than it misses trilobites or the giant armadillo. The significance we attach to…well, everything…is overdone when one looks from a grand, cosmic perspective.

There is no devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic Creator. There is no Creator of any variety. There is only nature, of which we are a sliver. We can be happy—and, really, this is enough—that evolution has granted us brains that are sufficiently large and complex to understand from where we came, along with constitutions strong enough to accept, in the last analysis, our species’—indeed, our world’s—final destination.

And so, down the rabbit hole we go, looking at Earth not as an extremely ancient planet whose antiquity is confirmed by several converging lines of evidence but, rather, as a baby planet whose considerable biodiversity can be entirely explained within a several-thousand-year history. Yes, now we must look at Earth as the backyard garden of the Creator. But what kind of a Creator? Looking at the available evidence, I shall explain why we can conclude such a Creator is (1) a devious being, who wishes to trick humans into believing Earth is extremely ancient and the species have an evolutionary history, (2) remarkably odd, because the distribution of species on Earth, if consciously arranged, speaks to an extraordinarily queer mind, (3) peerlessly wasteful, given the presence of nonfunctional pseudogenes, and (4) idiotic, as evidenced by the utterly incompetent design that can be found throughout the creation, in humans as well as other species.

The majority of my material, as well as my initial inspiration, comes from The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, and Why Evolution is True, by Jerry A. Coyne. When I use either author’s exact words, I shall quote him directly; if, however, I simply summarize a discussion in either text, I might not make a specific citation. Thus, let it be clear that Dawkins and Coyne’s fertile minds contributed invaluably to the whole of this piece.

First, then, surveying the evidence at our disposal, we can be certain that the Creator is devious, deliberately setting out to create a false impression of Earth’s antiquity and evolution’s occurrence. The first way in which this characteristic manifests itself is in the theory of plate tectonics, a geological theory that states the lithosphere of the Earth is divided into a small number of plates that float on and travel independently over the mantle. We now understand that the continents have not always existed as we currently know them. For example, Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent encompassing our present South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica. Gondwana broke up gradually, in stages.

Our principal interest is when Africa and South America began breaking apart, which, according to current scientific thinking, was about 140 million years ago. The two continents are now separated by some 3000 miles, with the speed of separation being a couple of inches per year. If, however, Earth is actually quite young—merely several thousand years old—and the product of a Creator, such a snail-like speed would not be nearly enough to separate the continents to their current distance. Indeed, if, as some have proposed, Gondwana broke up during the Noachian flood, the continents would positively have had to hurtle away from each other. Because the speed of separation can be measured, and it is remarkably slow, we can be confident that any Creator who separated the continents at a very quick speed sometime in the last few thousand years is trying to deceive us into believing Earth is ancient. The Creator is deceptive.

The Creator’s trickster tendencies are also apparent in our radioactive clocks. Radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks (rocks formed by magma cooling down and becoming solid) are used for dating purposes, because the isotopes decay at a constant rate. It is important to note that there are several radioactive isotopes scientists use, and they often co-exist within the same rocks. The decay rate used is typically the half-life, that being how long it takes for half of the unstable isotope present to decay to something stable (to go from 100 to 50, 50 to 25 and so forth). Carbon-14 decays to Nitrogen-14; its half-life is 5730 years. Uranium-238 decays to Lead-206; its half-life is 4.5 billion years. Uranium-235 decays to Lead-207; its half-life is 704 million years. Other unstable isotopes include Potassium-40, Thorium-232, Rubidium-87 and Samarium-147. Importantly, as Jerry Coyne writes, “Several radioisotopes usually occur together, so the dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariably agree.”

This is important because, with our half-life figures calibrated, we can use radioactive clocks to converge on an approximation of Earth’s age. In fact, scientists have done just that. Richard Dawkins writes, “The currently agreed age of 4.6 billion years is the estimate upon which several different clocks converge.” This fact surely means the Creator—who created Earth merely several thousand years ago—is devious beyond compare. Not only did he change the half-life figures of every radioactive isotope that we use for historical dating, but he also changed them in such a way that each one converges on the same ancient age—4.6 billion years—for Earth! To be sure, for every clock to converge on, say, 6000 years, every half-life would have to be tweaked differently.

Dawkins makes this point: “Bear in mind the huge differences in timescales of the different clocks, and think of the amount of contrived and complicated fiddling with the laws of physics that would be needed in order to make all the clocks agree with each other, across the orders of magnitude, that the Earth is 6000 years old and not 4.6 billion!” To do such fiddling, thus making every radioactive isotope that we use all agree that Earth is 4.6 billion years old, attests to a Creator who deliberately attempts to trick humans undertaking scientific study. The Creator is devious.

This deviousness extends to evolution, which, clearly, the Creator wants scientists to accept; that is the only explanation for the fossil record. When we talk about “dating fossils,” what we nearly always mean is dating the rocks around which the fossils are found. This is where the geologic strata become important. The geologic strata (singular is “stratum”) are layers of rock, one on top of the other, with the oldest rocks the deepest down and the youngest rocks the highest up. The scientific community refers to this layering as the geologic column, and it is extremely well evidenced. The salient point for our purposes here is that, when dating fossils (actually, the rocks around which fossils are found), they appear in a strict evolutionary order. When questioned by a creationist as to what observation could possibly disprove Darwinian evolution, the late J. B. S. Haldane famously answered, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!” On the evolutionary view, the Precambrian spans from Earth’s formation about 4.6 billion years ago to approximately 542 million years ago; rabbits are mammals, and the first mammals do not come onto the scene until about 250 million years ago. As Coyne writes, “Needless to say, no Precambrian rabbits, or any other anachronistic fossils, have ever been found.”

The complete absence of anachronistic fossils lends considerable credence to the evolutionary view. To reconcile it with a Creator, one absolutely must assume a devious trickster. Dawkins writes, “It is a fact that literally nothing that you could remotely call a mammal has ever been found in Devonian rock or in any older stratum. They are not just statistically rarer in Devonian than in later rocks. They literally never occur in rocks older than a certain date.” He continues, “There are literally no trilobites above Permian strata, literally no dinosaurs (except birds) above Cretaceous strata.” At the considerable risk of deceased equine flogging, Dawkins sums it up: “All the fossils that we have, and there are very very many indeed, occur, without a single authenticated exception, in the right temporal sequence.” How many dinosaur fossils have we found in the same rocks as Australopithecine fossils? Zero. How many zebra fossils have we found in the same rocks as trilobite fossils? Zero. How many anachronistic fossils have been authenticated? Zero. The only explanation is that the deceptive Creator is fudging the fossils to make Darwinian evolution an inescapable conclusion.

On creationism, the distribution of species on Earth makes very little sense, attesting to a Creator with an extremely odd mind, bordering on completely inscrutable. Nowhere is this sheer oddness more evident than in island biogeography. With respect to islands, there is an important distinction that is material to our discussion: the difference between continental islands and oceanic islands. Continental islands are those that once were connected to a continent but later became separated. An example would be Madagascar. Oceanic islands, by contrast, are those that never were part of a continent; islands of this variety arose from the seafloor. An example here would be St. Helena.

On a creationist theory positing a Creator who is not a weirdo, there is little reason to suppose there would be much difference vis-à-vis biogeography between continental and oceanic islands. However, the differences are dramatic, which has led many scientists to accept evolution and, in our case, for us to conclude the Creator is simply an odd duck. Coyne writes, “Oceanic islands are missing many types of native species that we see on both continents and continental islands. Take Hawaii, a tropical archipelago whose islands occupy about 6400 square miles, only slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts. While the islands are well stocked with native birds, plants, and insects, they completely lack native freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, and land mammals. Napoleon’s island of St. Helena and the archipelago of Juan Fernández lack these same groups, but still have plenty of endemic plants, birds, and insects. The Galápagos Islands do have a few native reptiles (land and marine iguanas, as well as the famous giant tortoises), but they too are missing native mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish. Over and over again, on the oceanic islands that dot the Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean, one sees a pattern of missing groups—more to the point, the same missing groups.”

It takes only a moment of thought to recognize that plants, birds, and insects and other arthropods “can colonize an oceanic island through long-distance dispersal.” By contrast, land mammals, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish would have extreme difficulty colonizing an oceanic island unless, for example, some reptiles made it onto a log that happened to “raft” onto one. The topic of island biogeography is rich, and a great deal more could be said, but it exceeds the scope of this paper. Suffice it to note that, on creationism, with anything but an extraordinarily queer Creator, we would not expect such differential biodiversity on continental versus oceanic islands.

The peculiarity with which the species are dispersed cannot be overstated, and Dawkins asks the questions as well as anyone does. He writes, “Why would all those marsupials—ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts—why would all those marsupials, but no placentals at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle—in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road? Why did the entire order Edentata (all twenty species of armadillo, including the extinct giant armadillo, all six species of sloth, including extinct giant sloths, and all four species of anteater) troop off unerringly for South America, leaving not a rack behind, leaving no hide nor hair nor armour plate of settlers somewhere along the way? Why were they joined by the entire infraorder of caviomorph rodents, including guinea pigs, agoutis, pacas, maras, capybaras, chinchillas and lots of others, a large group of characteristically South American rodents found nowhere else?” Dawkins notes that lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, and thus continues, “Did all thirty-seven and more species of lemur troop in a body down Noah’s gangplank and hightail it (literally in the case of the ringtail) for Madagascar, leaving not a single straggler by the wayside, anywhere throughout the length and breadth of Africa?” Once again, then, we have no choice but to conclude the Creator is profoundly odd.

The next two Creator characteristics can be discerned more briefly, and I shall do so to keep the information easily digestible. The third characteristic of a Creator is that he is peerlessly wasteful, and this fact is never more clear than in examining the pseudogene, which is defined as a sequence of DNA that is very similar to a normal gene but that has been altered slightly so that it is not expressed; by definition, they are incapable of producing a protein product. Coyne writes, “Virtually every species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about thirty thousand genes, for example, we humans carry more than two thousand pseudogenes. Our genome—and that of other species—are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes.” For what possible reason would the Creator litter the genome with pseudogenes—a gene that, by definition, does entirely nothing? Because, as I say, the Creator must be prodigal in the extreme. Perhaps shameless wastefulness is a virtue.

Finally, the evidence clearly shows that the Creator, far from being a designer of formidable intelligence, is rather idiotic. In so declaring, I am not referencing the mindless wastefulness of pseudogenes; rather, I refer to the shoddy engineering and craftsmanship of the species themselves. A classic example—indeed, it has been well mined by Darwinians—is the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals. Coyne writes, “Running from the brain to the larynx, this nerve helps us speak and swallow. The curious thing is that it is much longer than it needs to be. Rather than taking a direct route from the brain to the larynx, a distance of about a foot in humans, the nerve runs down into our chest, loops around the aorta and a ligament derived from an artery, and then travels back up (‘recurs’) to connect to the larynx. It winds up being three feet long. In giraffes the nerve takes a similar path, but one that runs all the way down that long neck and back up again: a distance fifteen feet longer than the direct route!” Of course, on an evolutionary view, this presents some evidence of common mammalian descent; on our creationist view, it simply reveals a Creator whose stupidity is reliable.

The examples I could mine in the vein of the Creator’s idiocy would fill a book—perhaps several. The vas deferens takes a similar nonsensical detour in its route from testis to penis. In his inimitable way, Dawkins writes, “It takes a ridiculous detour around the ureter, the pipe that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder. If this were designed, nobody could seriously deny that the designer had made a bad error.” Yet another example of idiocy comes in the form of goose bumps. In species with a full coat of hair, piloerection makes sense. If the creature is cold, it results in the erect hairs trapping air to create a layer of insulation. Additionally, if the creature is threatened, “puffing up” its body hair can create the impression that the animal is larger. In short, then, piloerection, though completely sensible for hair-covered animals, is utterly senseless in humans—the naked ape. It is as though the Creator, in a fit of idiocy, attached a steering wheel to a refrigerator. Thus, we can be assured that the Creator, responsible for humans and bats, dandelions and plesiosaurs, is formidably moronic.

Is this really what creationists seek? Do they really want a Creator who is devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic? We must go where the evidence takes us; we must look at the simple facts and draw our conclusions directly from them—we must never let the conclusion dictate the facts we choose to recognize. The facts that we find as we examine and analyze the natural order all lead directly to Darwinian evolution by natural selection. To make any creationism hypothesis work, we must (a) endow the Creator with numerous negative attributes that fundamentally contradict the holy books from which creationists lift their science and (b) flagrantly violate the principle of parsimony. Is the simplest, most parsimonious explanation for the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals really that the Creator’s idiocy was in full force when designing, for example, humans and giraffes? What about the geologic strata and the complete absence of anachronistic fossils? What about the radioactive clocks? Did the Creator really tinker with all the half-life values, making them all converge on a fictitious ancient age for Earth?

Some creationist worries are legitimate. On evolution, humans indeed are just another species of animal. Knowing our place in the single tree of life robs us of our specialness, to some considerable extent. It also undermines objective morality. A polar bear might eat its own young. Do concepts of “moral” or “immoral” apply to that situation? If not, why would such concepts apply to humans, who are a twig on the tree of life just as much as polar bears are? Natural selection might have favored “moral instincts,” but such inclinations are hardly objective or prescriptive in any conventional sense. Evolution provides no morality-oriented “ought to” or “ought not to” as far as behavior.

More than anything else, evolution puts us in our place. We are just another species of animal. One day we shall go extinct. Our universe shall not miss us—at least, not any more than it misses trilobites or the giant armadillo. The significance we attach to…well, everything…is overdone when one looks from a grand, cosmic perspective.

There is no devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic Creator. There is no Creator of any variety. There is only nature, of which we are a sliver. We can be happy—and, really, this is enough—that evolution has granted us brains that are sufficiently large and complex to understand from where we came, along with constitutions strong enough to accept, in the last analysis, our species’—indeed, our world’s—final destination.

I am not a Christian because god is absent or, at the least, silent. In essence, those of the Christian faith proclaim that our universe, and all that is part of it, is in the hands of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator deity who takes a personal interest in human affairs. It is completely inexplicable, then, that this creator deity would be entirely undetectable and utterly absent from day-to-day life. If one reads the Bible, one finds an active, present, immediate god; moreover, one finds copious miracles and prodigies that are unlike anything with which we are familiar.

David Hume writes, “It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations…. When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole frame of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner, from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgements, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous….” Hume rightly adds, “It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days.”

Why would a god who, in barbarous and ignorant times, was so clear, present and active suddenly, upon the emergence of a scientific understanding of the natural order, become a silent, inert sluggard whose presence could only be discerned in the most obscure, skepticism-baiting ways? Where are the miracles and prodigies for our scientific age? Richard Carrier writes, “For example, only those who believe in the true Christian Gospel [could] be granted…supernatural powers that could be confirmed by science; only true Christian Bibles [could] be indestructible, unalterable, and self-translating; and [a] Divine Voice [could] consistently convey to everyone the will and desires of the Christian message alone.” Because god, if existent, is a do-nothing layabout, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because the Bible, despite the fact it is purported to be inspired by god himself, wallows in pitiable prescientific primitivism and yawn-inducing mundanity. Certainly, considering its divine inspiration, one might expect the Bible to be full of dazzlingly specific information of which no one had been previously aware. Considering its divine inspiration, one might expect the pinnacle of all intellectual achievement. This is not so. Sam Harris writes, “[The Bible] does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.” There is nothing about the actual age or size of our universe. There is nothing about the germ theory of disease. Earth’s vast geography is shrunk down to claustrophobically local levels. It is not even clear from the Bible whether the creator of our universe is aware of Australia. The Bible is not a product of divine inspiration but, rather, lamentable ancient ignorance.

How, Christopher Hitchens asks, can Genesis be proven the mundane work of ignorant humans in merely a paragraph? “Because,” he writes, “man is given 'dominion' over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia—the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new 'Eden'—was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had 'dominion' over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.”

Because the Bible’s mundanity belies the claim of divine inspiration, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because worship of Yahweh as the singular creator deity did not arise independently among numerous geographically isolated populations. Any delusional belief system, if designed cleverly enough, has the potential to “catch fire,” as it were, and spread pervasively throughout our species. Much less likely, however, would be for the same delusional belief system to arise independently in many different places. Imagine if, around 2000 BCE, worship of Yahweh had arisen, nearly simultaneously, in the Middle East, China, the Americas and central Africa. What would have been the odds of an identical god character—with distinctive quirks, commandments, preferences and fetishes—being invented by completely different populations? They seem infinitesimal. However, there is no evidence of Yahweh-worship arising independently. However spiritual they might previously have been, primitive populations began to worship Yahweh specifically when believers in Yahweh arrived at their shores.

Christopher Hitchens writes, “One recalls the question that was asked by the Chinese when the first Christian missionaries made their appearance. If god has revealed himself, how is it that he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing the Chinese?” Whatever deities might have haunted Chinese history, none was distinguishably Yahweh. Because god did not independently reveal himself to several geographically isolated populations, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because the Bible contains palpably nonsensical claims. Matthew attests to a horde of zombies roaming about Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53). Lot's luckless wife was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). People attain impossible ages: Adam, 930 years; Noah, 950 years; Abraham, 175 years; Sarah, 127 years (less ludicrous, but still). Jesus is alleged to have been born by what can only be presumed to be parthenogenesis, despite the fact that, as Christopher Hitchens notes, “…parthenogenesis is not possible for human mammals.”

When confronted with nonsense, one has no obligation to proffer any counterargument. As David Hume writes, for a just reasoner, “a miracle, supported by any human testimony, [is] more properly a subject of derision than of argument.” Because the Bible testifies to self-evidently ludicrous claims, which justly demand derision, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because, though archaeological evidence could have substantiated the biblical narrative, it does not. Christopher Hitchens writes, “…much more extensive and objective work was undertaken, presented most notably by Israel Finkelstein of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and his colleague Neil Asher Silberman. These men regard the ‘Hebrew Bible’ or Pentateuch as beautiful, and the story of modern Israel as an all-around inspiration, in which respects I humbly beg to differ. But their conclusion is final, and the more creditable for asserting evidence over self-interest. There was no flight from Egypt, no wandering in the desert (let alone for the incredible four-decade length of time mentioned in the Pentateuch), and no dramatic conquest of the Promised Land. It was all, quite simply and very ineptly, made up at a much later date. No Egyptian chronicle mentions this episode either, even in passing, and Egypt was the garrison power in Canaan as well as the Nilotic region at all the material times. Indeed, much of the evidence is the other way. Archaeology does confirm the presence of Jewish communities in Palestine from many thousands of years ago (this can be deduced, among other things, from the absence of those pig bones in the middens and dumps), and it does show that there was a ‘kingdom of David,’ albeit rather a modest one, but all the Mosaic myths can be safely and easily discarded.” Because archaeological evidence contradicts biblical claims and shows them to be false, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because prayer is useless and, in its very design, self-deluding. Prayer has been tested in a scientific manner, and failed. The Harvard Medical School Office of Public Affairs issued a news release entitled “Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not Effective In Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery” on March 31, 2006. The paper appears in the April issue of American Heart Journal.

The release reads: “Researchers in the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the largest study to examine the effects of intercessory prayer—prayer provided by others—evaluated the impact of such prayer on patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.”

It continues, “The STEP team, composed of investigators at six academic medical centers, including Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida; Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C; and the Mind/Body Medical Institute, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications. The study also found that patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse. [Emphasis mine.]”

Prayer could have evidence value in proving Christianity correct. If prayer resulted in amputees’ missing limbs growing back, it would be hard to dispute its efficacy. As things actually are, when people indulge in the folly of prayer, they almost always pray for things that might happen anyway. A husband prays that his wife gets a lucrative job. A mother prays that her son, trapped underground in a mine, gets out safely. Parents-to-be pray that their son is healthy. Grandchildren pray that their grandfather beats his cancer. By contrast, few widows pray that their dead husbands reanimate and come back home. Even though god is supposed to be omnipotent, people have the good sense not to pray for things that are impossible; deep in the subconscious, people very much want to maintain the comforting illusion of prayer’s usefulness. And that is why amputees do not pray for limbs to grow back. It is also why, if they did pray, and their limbs did regrow, there would be evidence value. Because prayer is ineffective and self-deluding, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because Darwinian evolution by natural selection is true, but any clear-eyed reading of the Bible reveals the text (and not merely Genesis, but also statements by Jesus and Paul) is fundamentally incompatible with common descent. Darwinian evolution reveals that various orders of animal roamed the planet (and, indeed, went extinct) before other orders of animal even came to be. Biblical-literalist Christians argue that all orders of animal were created at about the same time; that is, humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Despite mighty efforts, such Christians have been completely unsuccessful in falsifying Darwin’s brilliant theory, although, theoretically, the geologic strata present a falsification opportunity. A biblical-literalist Christian could find horse fossils in the Silurian (among multitudinous trilobites). Alternatively, as requested by the late J. B. S. Haldane, a Christian could discover fossil rabbits in the Precambrian. Of course, though, as Jerry A. Coyne writes, “Needless to say, no Precambrian rabbits, or any other anachronistic fossils, have ever been found.” Because Darwinian evolution by natural selection is true, whereas the biblical creation narrative is false, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because it is a solipsistic religion that places humans at our universe's center. There are very possibly 130 billion galaxies in our universe. A dwarf galaxy can be populated with as few as 10 million stars. Spiral galaxies—much more massive than dwarf galaxies—can contain hundreds of billions of stars. The Andromeda galaxy, by itself, has about a trillion stars. The Sun is one star. We are on one planet that orbits it.

Michael Shermer writes, “What science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an expanding cosmic bubble universe that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse was designed and exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? It seems unlikely.”

Remember, too, human evolutionary history on our planet. Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. By contrast, Homo sapiens, in more modern forms, first made their appearance about 195,000 years ago. This, of course, means human-like creatures have been around less than one-hundredth of one percent of Earth’s natural history. And yet, for Christians, humans are central not only to Earth, but to our unimaginably vast universe. We, essentially, are what all of this is “for.” Talk about a prodigal god….

When one considers the size and age of our universe—and the inescapable fact of our ultimate cosmic insignificance—Christianity seems yet sillier for its stern moral proscriptions. Our universe has been in existence for between 13.5 and 14 billion years. Its enormity exceeds the mind’s ability to conceive properly. And, yet, the creator of this natural reality—the artist behind cosmic beauty and wonder—is perturbed…is rather miffed…about what humans on Earth are doing while naked?

Because Christianity ludicrously inflates humanity’s importance and centrality, both to Earth and to our universe, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because the god of Christianity is too statistically improbable. Some Christians accept the truth of Darwinian evolution by natural selection (despite common descent’s incompatibility with the Bible), but believe god must be invoked to explain the appearance of that first life form, on which Darwinian evolution acted. That is, to these people, god is not required to explain biodiversity—Darwinian evolution does that—but, rather, is required to explain the origin of simple life. The problem with this is one of simplicity versus extravagance. In order to explain the appearance of monocellular life… we must appeal to an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator deity who has the ability to monitor the thoughts, deeds and desires of every human who has ever existed while, simultaneously, listening to billions of prayers and, if so moved, answering them (while also, of course, reigning over heaven)?

Appealing to a god is laughably extravagant as an explanation for monocellular life and, indeed, completely unhelpful when seeking an explanation for our universe. Richard Dawkins writes, “Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable—and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.”

Dawkins continues, “To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other ‘cranes’ (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to ‘skyhooks’) that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.”

Because god is too statistically improbable, and serves as no kind of explanation for either monocellular life or our universe, I am not a Christian.

I am not a Christian because religion all too often tends to be an accident of geography. Frequently, I pose a question to my theist friends who still follow the religion into which their parents indoctrinated them: Do you feel fortunate to have been born into the correct religion? Researchers have concluded 19 major world religious groupings exist on this planet. Those groupings are subdivided into roughly 10,000 distinct religions (which is not to mention all the belief systems that have gone extinct over the millennia). Leaf through the list of religions, and ponder just how different your life would have been had a different superstition been inculcated into you during your youth.

I would suggest that if a devout Christian, who was born in Topeka, Kansas, had instead been born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he would have been a devout Muslim. If Osama bin Laden, who is a devout Muslim, had instead been born in Athens, Alabama, he would have been a devout Christian. Religion spreads, passively, by the coincidental geography of one’s place of birth and, actively, by parents’ talent for inculcating their defenseless, trusting offspring. Some people seemingly have a predisposition to religious zeal; the religion to which they wed themselves has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with inculcative history. The Christian apologetics that is utterly convincing to a person born in Hendersonville, Tennessee, would be infidelic venom to that very person, had he instead been born in Tehran, Iran.

Because a fundamentalist Christian, in an alternate reality, would be just another mujahid, I am not a Christian.

2. The Bible, which, according to Christians, is the inspired word of an omniscient god, does not contain the slightest shred of internal evidence to support that contention. Indeed, every single sentence in the entire tome could have been written by any first century commoner with the rare talent of literacy. Men’s ignorance in biblical times was so comprehensive as to be rather shocking; the Bible fully captures, and credulously regurgitates, the ancient ignorance of its time.

3. On Christianity, god is interested in human salvation, and the religion quite clearly holds that salvation is achieved through saving faith. It is interesting, then, that god has not been more proactive in disseminating this rather important point, given the fact that, even now, there are remote places that the Christian message has not yet penetrated. Christianity’s slow spread by the efforts of man indicates god, if existent, does not much care whether his message is heard.

4. With its bizarre tales and miracle claims, the Bible reads like any common collection of mythology. A world in which a virgin birth occurs, men rise from the dead, miraculous healings are effected and street magic is not mere illusion bears no similarity to, and has no relationship with, the world in which we find ourselves, where the laws of nature are immutable. When one reads mythology and legendry, one finds precisely the same topsy-turvy world one recognizes from the Bible.

5. Although even some Christians discount the factual veracity of most of the Old Testament, many still dogmatically hold to the myths about Moses and the Israelites. The best available evidence indicates the flight from Egypt, wandering in the desert and conquest of the Promised Land did not ever occur. Indeed, rather than the Israelites conquering Canaan following the Exodus, most of them, in fact, had always been there. That is, the Israelites were simply Canaanites who forged a distinct culture. The Old Testament contains nothing more than self-aggrandizing folktales.

6. One of the few theological tenets that are clearly open to scientific experimentation is prayer. And, in fact, the efficacy of intercessory prayer has been tested in a rigorous and credible way. The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which attempts to wed religious and scientific thinking, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on complication-free recovery from coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In this case, prayer was tested credibly and it comprehensively failed.

7. The fact of Darwinian evolution by natural selection contradicts biblical Christianity and shows it to be false. Although some proportion of Christians has succeeded, in their minds, in melding the Christian faith with recognition of Darwinian fact, this seems a fruitless exercise. There is not a whisper of Darwinian understanding in the Bible, which, as Christianity’s foundational text, purports to speak to questions of origins. Any “harmony” between Darwinian thought and the Bible is the product of an elaborate construct invented by scientifically aware Christians.

8. The Christian religion is fantastically solipsistic with respect to the human animal and its place in the cosmos. The Christian message specifically says that humans are god’s special creation—made in his image—and that, of all the creation, he is principally interested in us. This notion, of course, arose in a time of immense ignorance of the cosmos. We are a single species, on a single planet, part of a single solar system, in a single galaxy, in an almost unimaginably vast universe. Humanocentrism is a luxury of ignorance we can no longer sustain.

9. To cite god is to invite an infinite regress from which there is no escape. Any god character who is complex enough to design a universe—let alone to monitor every human being who has ever lived, listen to and answer prayers, and send a son to die for our sins—is statistically improbable exactly because of that complexity. Inasmuch as Christians offer no explanation for god’s existence, it is all but ruled out simply because of the statistical improbability of unexplained organized complexity. We can explain the human brain’s evolution; Christians cannot explain the organized complexity of god.

10. The faith to which one adheres seems, in the majority of cases, to be quite directly determined by (a) the faith of one’s parents and (b) the dominant faith of the society in which one is raised. Young children trust their parents—a fact that, quite clearly, has evolutionary benefits generally. However, it also means they are susceptible to parental religious inculcation, from which it can be difficult to liberate oneself. One wonders how many people adhere to Christianity, or any faith, as adults simply because they were raised that way.

11. Homo sapiens sapiens have walked the Earth, in something approaching modern forms, for the last 100,000 to 200,000 years. This is scientific fact, and no thinking person entertains Young Earth creationist piffle. This means, then, that for tens of thousands of years human beings lived, struggled, suffered and died—and Heaven watched, arms folded, in silence. After this interminable wait, which likely lasted well over 100,000 years, god decided that maybe it was time to intervene. His method of intervention? A nauseating human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine.

12. The world looks exactly as we would expect it to look if there was no god and no special interest in human affairs. Our planet is plagued with natural disasters in which people are killed indiscriminately—without any regard for their supposed righteousness or evilness. We do not find the slightest hint of ultimate justice in the cosmos. And god, who supposedly loves humans so dearly, demonstrates his laziness again. When there is a hijacking, he never zaps the hijackers with heart attacks. When a crazed gunman is on the loose, he never turns the bullets into popcorn. Love is in evidence; hate is in evidence. Only god is not in evidence.

13. Christianity loves to cloak itself in the raiment of meekness and humility, endlessly drawing attention to how humble it is. Christians call themselves lowly, sinful worms in god’s eyes, desperately in need of redemption through saving faith in Jesus. Although Christianity features an unquestionable tendency toward self-debasement, it is also fantastically arrogant. Fearing that the creator of the universe is upset with you is equally solipsistic—indeed, betrays equal arrogance—as enjoying peace from the belief that the creator of the universe is pleased with you.

14. The notion of an afterlife—surviving one’s bodily death—seems completely incompatible with our current scientific understanding. A blow to the head can rob one of one’s memories. Neurodegenerative disease, in some cases, can result in what might be described as the loss of the self. Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic head injury, the lasting effect of which was a dramatic change in personality. As Victor Stenger notes, neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts and, indeed, our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. What, then, would make it into the afterlife? Vague, impersonal energy?

15. To threaten small children with damnation to hell strikes me as a particularly hideous form of mental abuse. Our imaginations seem to be most vivid when we are children, and our credulity is at its peak. To small children, weeping and gnashing of teeth, not to mention lakes of fire, are not metaphorical descriptions of existence apart from god; to the undeveloped mind, they are real and haunting. One can only hope, when they grow and mature, they realize, to be a deterrent, hell’s awfulness must at least be commensurate with its ludicrousness. Because hell is infinitely silly, to deter anyone at all, it must threaten infinite punishment.

16. On Christianity, moral facts exist, because Christians stipulate that morality—what is good and what is evil—flows directly from god’s nature. They contend that god’s nature is unchangeable—cannot be otherwise—and, therefore, morality is objective. Yet, in conducting an evidence-based interrogation of the natural order, one finds no moral facts. Earth’s biodiversity is a bare fact. A conclusion flows naturally therefrom: A fact necessarily exists about the origin of, or explanation for, Earth’s biodiversity. Nowhere do we find the necessary existence of a moral fact, or any evidence that one exists.

17. If, as Christians say, morality flows directly from god’s nature, then any behavior god exhibits, and any action he commands or endorses, is necessarily righteous on the Christian view. In Genesis 19:4-8, the Bible character Lot offers his two virginal daughters up for rape to the men of Sodom, who surround his house. In 2 Peter 2:7-8, Lot is called “righteous” three times. The Bible, on Christianity, is the word of god; therefore, one must conclude Lot’s offering his two virginal daughters up for rape is consonant with god’s objective morality. Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and Joshua 10:28-40 demonstrate that god, whose very nature defines what is moral, sometimes commands genocide.

18. Men have been inventing deities for millennia, and Yahweh is just one in the near-infinite troop. As H.L. Mencken observed, the graveyard of dead gods, wherever it is, is well populated. I have little doubt that Yahweh’s grave is already dug, and that perhaps it is alongside the final resting places of Resheph, Baal, Anath, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Hadad, El, Addu, Nergal, Shalem, Nebo, Dagon, Ninib, Melek Taus and Yau. Then again, Yahweh’s grave might be closer to those of Amon-Re, Isis, Osiris, Ptah, Sebek, Anubis and Molech. RIP Yahweh.

19. Human beings, although clearly the most advanced species currently living on Earth, are easily deceived, deluded, confused and baffled. Our minds are well adapted for survival and for dealing with “Middle World,” where things are not microscopically small or cosmically very large, but they are still evolved organs with inherent limitations. Through a long period of trial and error, we can now conclude that marshaling evidence—relevant facts—is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth as we interrogate the world of experience. If Christianity is to be accepted, it must be on the strength of its evidence.

20. On scientific thinking, hypotheses are meritorious only to the extent that they (a) make predictions, (b) enable those predictions to be tested and (c) find that, upon testing, the predictions are confirmed. The Christian hypothesis, to its detriment, is exceedingly bad at having its predictions be confirmed. Let us take Genesis, for example. The creation chronology presented in Genesis represents a testable prediction. In recent times, science has been able to test that prediction. Rather than being confirmed, the prediction failed, because Genesis’ creation chronology is wrong. This is a strike against the Christian hypothesis. Archeological disproof of the Exodus narrative is another strike against the Christian hypothesis.

21. It has been said some people are so constituted that they cannot believe in god. I am not such an individual, insofar as I invite convincing evidence of god’s existence and workings. I shall not fall prostrate to god’s feet in any case, but I would believe god existed if the evidence were sufficient. Any moral opinions I articulate, including those in which I deem god’s actions evil, are expressions of my deepest nature; I am constituted as I am, and I can neither help nor change what fundamentally strikes me as grave evil, which would prevent me from worshipping god, irrespective of evidence for his existence.

My hatred of religion, however deeply felt, has not colored my analysis or blinded me to potential weaknesses in my arguments; on the contrary, my passions have been inflamed precisely because I have come to understand religion's flagrant falsity and its power to prey on the minds of those who are weak or helplessly indoctrinated. Moreover, as one who recognizes the power and beauty of science—as one who acknowledges that science, more than anything else, has pulled us out of our miserable ignorance and given us some shred of knowledge about the universe we inhabit—I take great offense at the pitiable primitivism, mysticism and supernaturalism that are part and parcel of religious practice. This “magical” fancifulness, which ought to have been abandoned in early childhood, serves to undercut a scientific approach to reasoning, crippling our ability to think and analyze rationally. This muddled thought and shameless unreason is nowhere more evident than in prayer.

Let me be succinct and clear: Prayer is a useless exercise, undertaken by those who, in a fit of childish delusion, believe they can effect change in the real world by falling to their knees and murmuring to themselves. These people, oftentimes adults who have been properly educated and who can function in day-to-day society quite serviceably, are under the distinctly infantile impression that muttering under their breath can affect the outcome of some circumstance in which they have a stake, emotional or otherwise. If an adult man conversed regularly with his invisible friend Paco Bill, an Old West-style cowboy, it would be a sign that man had departed from his sanity; when a large proportion of the population meekly murmurs to an invisible god at night, however, one is expected to hold one's tongue and not remark on the bizarre nature of said behavior. I shall not.

Perhaps the element of prayer I find most bothersome is the combination of silliness and arrogance that is manifest in the act. Suppose you are fervently praying one afternoon when, quite suddenly, the telephone rings. If you wished to finish your prayer, and you had a fidelity to honesty, you might tell the caller something like this: “I'm sorry, John, but I'll have to call you back. I'm talking to the creator of the universe at the moment, and I haven't quite finished what I have to say. I'll give you a ring when I'm done.” This is the delusion under which people who pray operate: They believe—and, yes, I find this utterly incredible—that they are conversing with, or at least directly addressing, the god who, they believe, is the architect of the cosmos. When a person prays for a sick friend, or a missing loved one, or whatever the cause might be, that person is attempting to make contact with—and ask a request of—the being who, they believe, designed Alpha Centauri and invented quasars and pulsars. What could be more arrogant than to believe the creator of the universe is accessible to you and wishes to hear your thoughts and requests?

Nothing puts humanity in its proper place like science. Current scientific thought suggests the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. As it pertains to the small blue planet on which we live, it has been around for about 4.54 billion years. With respect to humanity, hominids in something approaching modern forms did not evolve until perhaps 200,000 years ago, meaning that, on a cosmic scale, humanity has existed for merely an instant; we barely register as ever having existed at all. If there is a cosmic creator—a notion for which there is no good evidence, to be sure—we can be certain this creator is either unaware of, or disinterested in, humanity as a whole—let alone individual members of the species! Humanity is to the universe as a single grain of sand on a beach is to Earth; the entire species could go extinct in a nuclear blast tomorrow, and the universe would not take the slightest notice, nor miss our kind. The breathtaking ego of thinking one's petty personal problems would interest the universe's architect cannot be overstated, nor can the lunacy of believing such a creator would even be aware of the pious muttering, let alone listen to it.

Prayer is, indeed, an exercise in self-deception. When people feel powerless—when they feel like they cannot do anything to aid in a terrible situation—they grope desperately to find that magical act that might help; all too often, prayer is the result. As philosopher Daniel Dennett once wrote, the feelings of affection and love that inspire prayer might be appreciated, but the act itself is not; indeed, it is an act for which forgiveness should be sought. To pray is to do nothing of use...to do nothing that will effect any change in any situation. If someone hears about a catastrophic earthquake and then proceeds to pray for the victims, rather than donating a substantial sum, that person, in my view, is acting in a way worthy of disapprobation. The same goes for a hypothetical missing little girl: If a neighbor fervently prays for her safe return home, but does not participate in the search party, the neighbor does nothing of use or help. Speaking for myself, I would urge my own loved ones to keep their muttering to themselves. I, of course, appreciate the feelings for me that would inspire prayers, but I no more welcome them than I would invite someone to sacrifice a goat on my behalf on an altar he constructed in his backyard.

The aforereferenced self-deception becomes ever more apparent when one considers the degree to which people who believe in the power of prayer “count the hits and ignore the strikes.” There is a word for when a person prays and then the thing for which he prayed happens: a miracle. There is no word for when prayers are callously ignored. Not to prostitute a tragedy for argumentative purposes, but consider the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster that occurred on April 5. How many times did you hear the phrase, “Pray for our miners”? How many prayers were offered, in earnest hope that precious life would be preserved? If those miners had lived through the incident, people surely would have partially credited the power of prayers for their survival. Given the tragic eventual outcome, though, the refusal to acknowledge a strike against prayer's efficacy is conspicuous. Answered prayers are a sign that prayer works; unanswered prayers are just tragic twists of fate. This kind of intellectual dishonesty—counting the hits and ignoring the strikes—is worthy of disapprobation, as well, and is even more disturbing for its seeming universality.

When you wake up tomorrow morning and leave your house for work, take a quick look skyward before you get into your car to drive off. Can you really imagine, for instance, seeing Jesus descending from the heavens—perhaps casting a luminous specter over the local Dairy Queen—ready to separate the righteous from the wicked? Is that the kind of world in which we live? Or do we live in the more prosaic, albeit still amazing, world that science has illuminated for us? Do we live in a world rife with miracles and prodigies and magic and supernaturalism? Or do we live in a world that, although deeply mysterious due to our continuing ignorance, operates according to a comprehensible natural order that allows for no convenient, anomalous miracles?

Rise from your knees; cease your mindless murmurs to a god who does not exist or, at best, does not care; and accept the world as it actually is. There is learning to do, there are discoveries to be made and there is knowledge to win. The blackness has not yet fully lifted, but we can only strive for greater illumination when we clutch science as, as Carl Sagan might have said, our candle in the dark.

On any Bible-centered Christian worldview, it is quite easy to apprehend what is right and what is wrong...what good and what evil. To a Christian, such as my frequent interlocutor Rhology, that which is good is consonant with god’s nature and that which is evil is counter to it. A key point must be made clear: On Christianity, it is not that god’s will conforms to that which is good; rather, on this view, god’s nature defines what is good. To a Christian, anything god does, commands or affirms is necessarily good, and could not be otherwise. Turning to the Bible, then, any behavior god exhibits therein, and any action he commands or endorses, is necessarily righteous on the Christian view.

To live up to this post’s title, then, I first must prove that god endorses—approves of—“offered rape.” To do this, I shall cite Lot, the well-known biblical character whose unfortunate wife was turned into a pillar of salt. When two angels came to Sodom, which god had marked for destruction for its unbridled wickedness, the kind and righteous Lot would not accept their intention to spend the night in the square and, instead, took them into his house. No sooner had they eaten a feast than the plot thickened….

Genesis 19:4-8

I selected a Bible translation in easily understood English to ensure the gist was clear: The men of Sodom were surrounding the house because they wanted to fuck the two angels. But Lot, being a good host, intervened in an effort to forestall such an unpleasant experience. His suggestion to the libidinous troop was to rape his two virgin daughters instead, whom he offered to bring out for them. This was the suggestion of Lot, the most righteous man in the entire city.

How do we know Lot was considered righteous? We do not even have to cite the simple fact the angels moved to save him and his family. It is spelled out very clearly:

2 Peter 2:7-8

The Bible, on Christianity, is the word of god. On the Christian view, god’s nature is the definition of what is right, or good. The Bible describes Lot as righteous, and god’s own angels move to deliver Lot from Sodom’s imminent destruction. At the same time, in his efforts to bargain with a lascivious mob of would-be angel sodomites, Lot offers his virginal daughters up for rape. Thus, in at least some circumstances, offered rape, on the Christian view, is consonant with upstanding morality.

The Bible also expresses, in the clearest of terms, the moral righteousness of genocide in some cases. Let us first define genocide so no later confusion is possible: Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group, whether racial, political, cultural or religious. To demonstrate god’s endorsement, the challenge is not so much finding applicable passages to select as avoiding the potential pitfall of illustrating the point gratuitously. Here are a few prime examples:

Deuteronomy 7:1-5

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

Joshua 10:28-40

Working from our definition that genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group, whether racial, political, cultural or religious, there can be little—nay, absolutely no—doubt that the god of the Bible has commanded genocide. This is not to say that any genocide is consonant with godly righteousness; not in the least. It is not even to say that one in 1000 genocides is consonant with godliness. It is merely to prove that, on the Christian view, in principle, genocide can be consistent with righteousness before god. It proves that, if god condescended to humanity again tomorrow, and he commanded genocide, it would be consistent with some previous commands and, on the Christian view, to perform genocide would be moral.

I believe it has been established sufficiently that the god of the Bible—in circumstances however limited—endorses offered rape and actual genocide. In those circumstances—again, however limited—offered rape and actual genocide, on Christianity, are consonant with god’s necessarily righteous nature.

Before that, though, I wish to delve a bit deeper into Christian thought in general. The overwhelming majority of my writings have to do with Christianity’s truth or, more precisely, its untruth, as revealed by our best available evidence. I do not seek to make a moral case against Christianity because, at present, we have no good evidence that moral facts (that is, facts about what is moral or immoral) exist; in any case, Christianity having what I perceive to be negative consequences has no bearing whatsoever on its truth value. Nevertheless, because this relates directly to the exchange below, I shall reference two moral concerns I have about the Christian faith: First is the aforereferenced egocentric solipsism lying at its heart and with which it infects its adherents. Second is the odious, noxious nature of some of its theological tenets, for example damnation in hell, which I recently deconstructed here. In the main, Christians attempt to paint their religion in the colors of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. If, however, one is unwilling to submit to their preachments, they often let the simmering threat system upon which Christianity is predicated boil to the surface.

As you read the following exchange, do consider these points: In his certitude and in the place he carves for himself in the cosmos, which one betrays greater arrogance? Which one is more likely to presume to know far more than he actually can? Which one is more apt to stand in judgment against the other?

Nihilist: I have nothing much to say here except to observe that fearing the creator of the universe is upset with you is equally solipsistic—indeed, betrays equal arrogance—as enjoying peace from the belief that the creator of the universe is pleased with you; the insincere raiment of meekness and humility with which Christian thought cloaks itself is a poor substitute for being genuinely humbled by the insignificance of not just each of us but, indeed, of our entire race.

Rhology: I'm not sure you really understand biblical theology and thought, then. There's nothing insincere about how I esteem myself - I *am* a worm, disgusting in my sin and loathsome in my kicking against the redemption and purification that Jesus has provided for me.

God is not pleased with me in myself. He is pleased with me b/c "it pleased God to crush (Jesus)" on my behalf. I don't expect you to accept that for yourself, but it's not very decent nor humble of you to act like you can read my mind and thus prove me a liar.

Nihilist: My comment was not particularly about you, nor was it an attempt to prove you a liar or accuse you, specifically, of insincerity. What is insincere is the pretended meekness and humility of Christian thought itself. You might say and, indeed, believe that god is not pleased with you in yourself. Nevertheless, though, at the heart of Christian thought is the fantastic leap of solipsism that the creator the universe is personally aware of the individual, concerned for the individual, interested in the individual and in possession of love for the individual. The knitter of the fabric of space-time...he who confected Alpha Centauri...he who twiddles the knobs on the physical constants... is concerned with YOU (as the individual). Again, in whatever fashion Christian theology might force you to declare yourself a disgusting sinner who is shameful before god’s eyes, this remains a staggeringly arrogant stance to take, in my view.

Rhology: Why is it a fantastic leap, given Christian presuppositions?

What's so hard to see about a God Who is all-powerful and omniscient and Who concerns Himself with little things AND big things? After all, "big" to an infinite God means the expenditure of simply a larger numerator over an infinite denominator. It's nothing.

What we have here is just further expression of your stubborn unbelief. Fine. But it's nothing more.

What's far more arrogant is for you, mere man, to call evil what God has called good.

Nihilist: Any moral opinions I articulate, including those in which I deem something (the actions of your god not excepted) evil, are mere expressions of my deepest nature. I am constituted as I am, and I can neither help nor change what might fundamentally strike me as grave evil.

Rhology: The man-centered pride of your statement is striking. One day, your knee will bow. You who have explicitly chosen to put your blind faith in "evidence" and its power to tell you the truth, ignoring the many problems with your view and the many factors that your worldview doesn't account for, would call the teaching of Jesus "evil"...you're in for a very unpleasant end. May the Lord have mercy on you and not give you the judgment you so richly deserve.

To close, then, I humbly present the answer I would give to any god who, judging me after my death, would confront me for disbelieving in him. In this case, I must steal from Bertrand Russell: “Not enough evidence, god! Not enough evidence!”

This third reason why men invent gods and confect religions is my principal interest at present. I am not qualified to say whether individuals of any other species are aware of their own ultimate mortality, but we can be certain none possesses awareness near as acute as that of humans. And yet…death’s slow but sure approach does not preoccupy most of us. We watch our CSI-type shows and see a corpse on an examining table being looked over by the medical examiner, but it rarely occurs to us that, in some period of years—perhaps many but perhaps few—we shall be on just such a cold metal table. A mortician might not be our favorite person to see, but, when we do, it is seldom we consciously ponder that, eventually, powder and makeup shall be applied to our own ashen faces, drained entirely of their pinkness and vitality. I do not think our ability to forget about our own impending death has, in the main, to do with religious superstition; I think we are easily distracted by our prosaic day-to-day lives. But, surely, on the anthropological level, looking across cultures, the idea that one can survive one’s own death has appealed to our kind for millennia.

Although I am without gods, have no use for infantile spiritual pursuits and recognize an afterlife as nothing more than wishful thinking, I have no fear of death. (This is not to say I have no fear of possible pain associated with death, but only that dying, to me, is not frightening.) The balance of this post shall explain why. Religious individuals (principally Christians) have often warned me that, as a blasphemous atheist, I shall spend eternity in hell, being tortured and roasted and experiencing all manner of other such unpleasantness. To be sure, I recognize that, on Christianity’s truth, I shall be consigned to the fire pit; the conclusion is hardly debatable. However, these warnings give me no pause. One reason is that hell, in itself, seems so transparently invented as a means of controlling people’s behavior and making them fall into line. I also find laughable the very notion of a place where billions of wispy, incorporeal essences are tortured infinitely for finite sins committed during earthly life. (How might one torture a wispy, incorporeal essence, anyway? How might there be pain without a physical body? Beats me.) Why does the doctrine of hell entail unending, limitless torment? I submit that, to be an effective deterrent, hell’s awfulness must at least be commensurate with its ludicrousness. Because hell is an infinitely silly concept, to deter anyone at all, it must threaten infinite punishment.

There is no good reason to believe god’s celestial dictatorship exists in the real world but, for a moment, let us suppose it does. Indeed, let us suppose that hell exists, too, and billions have been consigned there. If a god exists who damns people to hell, this god is cruel beyond description and, to my standards, the very picture of evil. On Christianity, god is omniscient, in addition to being the author of every human soul (that being, the immaterial essence that animates our flesh). Omniscience entails that, when fashioning a soul, god already knows every action the person-to-be shall take; there can be no mystery for an omniscient creator. Inasmuch as god is creating people, the deity is creating each individual to be as he is. The deity made John Wayne Gacy to be John Wayne Gacy; he could have created him differently but he did not. In fashioning Gacy’s soul, the deity, with full foreknowledge, fashioned a serial killer who would not repent and who would be sent to hell. Gacy was created to fail, insofar as god chose to make him as he was and all his actions were a foregone conclusion even before he emerged from the womb. The deity, then, established a torture chamber, from which escape is impossible, to punish those people who he, given his omniscience, deliberately created to be unredeemed sinners (that is, sinners who he knows shall not get redemption). Indeed, god is the toymaker who, after purposefully making faulty toys, inflicts wrath upon them.

I do not recognize objective morality, but I see no way I could worship such a deity, who, in my judgment, exhibits the height of cruelty. No matter, though. The unfairness of a god who creates hell is rather a moot point, given that hell is a patently ridiculous concept. Rather than wasting breath arguing against it, it is more properly the subject of derision. Much like Jesus’ apparent parthenogenic birth, Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, and biblical characters living hundreds and hundreds of years, hell carries falsehood upon the very face of it.

If there is no hell, as surely there is not, what does happen to us when we die? Of course, no living individual can know for certain, but the evidence is rather clear: Upon death, we cease to be. Much as we all might wish that, after dying, we might find ourselves in a theme park in the clouds where our old friends and relatives eagerly await us, we really need to leave such childishness behind if we wish to have an accurate apprehension of reality. What, exactly, is supposed to make it into the afterlife? Victor Stenger writes, “We have seen that neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts, and indeed our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. So this would seem to say that when our brains die, we die.” And Stenger is correct, of course. A blow to the head can rob one of one’s memories. Neurodegenerative disease, in some cases, can result in what might be described as the loss of the self. Is one honestly supposed to believe that when the brain is dead—perhaps even rotting away—phenomena strictly dependent upon brain activity, such as memories, thoughts and personality, shall persist? If one wishes to pursue that silliness, one might also revert to the idea that emotions such as love emanate from the heart.

For something that at one time lives, death is merely not to exist. Indeed, in a true sense, each of us may say we were dead during all the years prior to our birth. I was dead throughout the entirety of the Holy Roman Empire. I was dead throughout the time of the dinosaurs. I was dead during World War I and World War II. I was dead when Charles Darwin was formulating his dangerous, and wonderful, idea. For the brief present period, I am alive; after this period, I shall be dead again. Insofar as my death was no inconvenience or trouble to me for the previous several billion years, I expect it shall cause me no unpleasantness for the several billion years upcoming. Sadness and regret, loneliness and missing—these are emotions for the living, and none of them follows when the dirt closes over us.

Atheism, then, is freeing and joyous in its way. True, it does not entice us with promises of an afterlife that does not exist. It cannot distract us from our mortality or life’s briefness. But, it allows us to focus our full attention on the single life we do have—this one—and wringing as much enjoyment from it as we can. We do not waste our time prostrating ourselves before a god who, by my standards, would be unworthy of mere acknowledgement, let alone servile obedience. We refuse to gorge ourselves on the false comforts of childish delusion, instead accepting the world for what (and how) it is and, indeed, finding joy, inspiration and wonderment in studying and better understanding the natural order. There is no need for Bronze-Age superstitions cooked up by semi-stupefied peasants when there is biology, cosmology, anthropology and physics, just as no one bothers with alchemy when chemistry is available to us.

Life might be short, and nothing but individual non-existence follows thereafter, but evolution has bequeathed us a gift that no other species has been given: We are capable of understanding our own evolutionary origins and where we, for a brief moment, find ourselves. If this is insufficient to occupy the mind, it is difficult to imagine any cobbled-together book of folklore or magic Jesus wafer would ever be.

Given the near universality of some behavioral codes among members of our species, we can be extremely confident that Darwinian evolution by natural selection had some role in shaping our collective sense of right and wrong. There are numerous examples that could be cited, but, to select one, there are very few, if not no, cultures that revere cowardice and pusillanimity while reviling courage and bravery. Most cultures have some version of The Golden Rule, which urges you to do to others as you would have them do to you. And it is easy to understand why certain behavioral guidelines would be selected for as our burgeoning civilization came to be. A functional society—that is, a society that can grow, prosper, maintain itself and cooperate—will persist; a dysfunctional society—that is, a society that is self-destructive, antagonistic and consistently hobbling itself—will die off. Even before proper civilizations began to emerge, certain kinds of behavior in smaller bands also would be conducive to a band’s success, and thus be selected.

Evolution is powered by natural selection. At its base, natural selection is about gene propagation; selection favors those things that enable “selfish genes” that wish to multiply (yes, I am anthropomorphizing) to get as many copies into the next generation as possible. In a sense, then, human bodies are just complicated machines whose sole purpose is propagating the genes that built them. We have sex and rear offspring because our selfish genes want the maximal number of copies in the next generation’s gene pool. Physical traits and characteristics evolve because they increase biological fitness (that is, the ability to reproduce successfully). Selection works against those traits detrimental to biological fitness. Instincts and inclinations evolve alongside, if not in direct relation to, the physical structures of the body.

Why do human societies, almost without exception, embrace The Golden Rule? It seems inescapable that they do so because that inclination, along with others, increased biological fitness among our ancestors, whether they were part of roving bands, small tribes or more advanced civilizations. Proscribing murdering one’s neighbors or stealing from one’s fellows made good sense vis-à-vis a population’s survival and, thus, moral instincts were imbued in the individuals. In short, then, our moral sensibilities developed because they were useful. This is not unique to morality. Richard Dawkins writes, “When we look at a solid lump of iron or rock, we are ‘really’ looking at what is almost entirely empty space. It looks and feels solid and opaque because our sensory systems and brains find it convenient to treat it as solid and opaque. It is convenient for the brain to represent a rock as solid because we can’t walk through it.” A rock looks and feels solid and opaque because it is useful for it to seem so. Similarly, it was useful for intraspecies (or, at least, intratribal) killing, theft and savagery to be considered immoral.

But does what happened to be evolutionarily useful actually relate to a cosmic truth vis-à-vis giant questions of “right” and “wrong”? There is no reason to suppose so. Evolution has imbued other inclinations into our nature, in a way not dissimilar to moral ones. For instance, generally speaking, males are more promiscuous than females are; this is a fact of observation. What explains it? It has to do with differential investment in sexual mating. In the case of males, the supply of sperm is essentially unlimited and, what is more, following fertilization, the male conceivably could abandon the female and still have some confidence of his offspring surviving and, thus, his genes making it into the next generation’s gene pool. Therefore, evolutionarily, it is in a male’s interest, essentially, to fertilize as many females as possible; this explains promiscuous inclinations. For females, though, the situation is reversed. Compared with sperm, females’ supply of eggs is much more limited, and their physical investment in a pregnancy is hugely greater than for males. Evolutionarily, it is in a female’s interest to be choosy about by whom she is fertilized. Does this understanding of differential investment in sexual mating mean men ought to be promiscuous and women ought to be choosy? I see no grounds for such a conclusion.

Studies of evolution help to explain our innate inclinations, and we may follow those inclinations or go against them—there is no “ought” of which to speak. Just because natural selection imbued us with tendencies or instincts does not mean we are slaves to them, or they touch on cosmic truth. Richard Dawkins gives an illuminating explication of natural selection, saying, “It is all about the survival of self-replicating instructions for self-replication.” He continues, “Viruses and tigers are both built by coded instructions whose ultimate message is, like a computer virus, ‘Duplicate me.’ In the case of the cold virus, the instruction is executed rather directly. A tiger’s DNA is also a ‘duplicate me’ program, but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger’s DNA says, ‘Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.’”

Thus, humanity’s delusions of exaltation crumble in a heap. Humans, like everything else on the tree of life, are a mere digression to ensure the survival of self-replicating instructions for self-replication. This biological reality check is amplified by our knowledge of the cosmos. I can think of no analogy to illustrate how tiny a speck of the cosmos humanity represents. Indeed, even if we restrict our view to our own meager planet, human-like creatures have been around less than one-hundredth of one percent of Earth’s natural history. We are a single species, on a single planet, part of a single solar system, in a single galaxy, in an almost unimaginably vast universe that would have long since forgotten about us if only it had known of us in the first place. The moral questions with which we wrestle seem terribly important to us, as do our thoughts and our actions…even material things like our possessions and our homes.

Doubtless, moles are preoccupied with their underground burrow systems, too.

The following thought experiment is designed for biblical-literalist Christians. Specifically, to partake in this thought experiment, it is necessary that (a) you believe Earth to be several thousand years old, rather than 4.54 billion years old, (b) you believe Earth’s biodiversity is explained by creationism/intelligent design, to the exclusion of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and (c) when referring to creation, both of Earth and of life, you credit the god of the Bible as the creator and ruler. If these stipulations coincide with your worldview, step right up and play along.

Suppose that, in just one instance, time travel was possible. For the sake of this hypothetical, assume that you—a biblical-literalist Christian—had the opportunity to travel far, far back in time and, of course, return to the present day after your trip. Further, suppose that a meddlesome secularist goaded you into traveling 100,000 years into the past, in hopes of proving to you that Earth, indeed, is far older than a mere several thousand years. For this hypothetical, let us assume that the time machine’s accuracy is 100% and, if there were no such thing as “100,000 years ago,” the machine would travel nowhere. (I deliberately spell out such prosaic assumptions because, to touch on the interesting issues raised by this thought experiment, I must close as many loopholes as I can conjure.)

You step into the time machine, which is set for 100,000 years into the past, and are whisked away. Moments later, you step out of the machine and find yourself very much on Earth. In fact, you are in what would now be called Western Europe. After mere moments of exploration, you stumble upon a species that is completely unfamiliar to you: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. You have never laid eyes on such a robust-looking hominid, and watch in awe as they ably hunt for sustenance. Later, to your shock, you stumble upon a burial site where the creatures place their dead. What a curious, curious creature—so seemingly skilled with tools and weapons and, more discomfiting to the biblical-literalist Christian, so similar to us while, at the same time, so unquestionably different.

You are about to step back into the time machine when you notice several woolly mammoths approaching. Needing little more encouragement, you return to the present day, where the meddlesome secularist anxiously awaits your report. Yes, you say, Earth is indeed older than a mere several thousand years. Having traveled to the very time in question, you can say with utter certainty that Earth, at the very least, is 100,000 years old. Obviously, this expedition could not prove Darwinian evolution by natural selection, but it would disprove Young Earth creationism. Old Earth creationism (hardly a monolithic school of thought) is not disproved; Darwin’s theory, of course, remains entirely in accord with the evidence gathered from the journey.

How grievous would the injury to your worldview be, if such an event were to transpire? Could you, as a biblical-literalist Christian, just switch from Young Earth creationism to Old Earth creationism and still leave the entirety of your worldview intact? Or, given your literalist interpretation of the Bible, would the absolute knowledge that Earth, at the very least, is 100,000 years old throw into doubt all you thought you had known? If the creation story, to some degree, must be read metaphorically, what else might be metaphorical? Jesus’ birth by parthenogenesis? The story of Noah and his ark? Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb? Would the shattering of Young Earth creationism poke too many holes in your worldview to be easily plugged? Or, again, would minor tweaks be sufficient to reinforce the edifice?

Let us not end the thought experiment there, though. Instead, let us take it a step further. Suppose, through some method I shall not bother to confect specifically, you came to the certain knowledge that Darwinian evolution by natural selection is true. For the purposes of the hypothetical, again, we are talking about utter and unquestionable 100% certainty. Additionally, let it be clear that microevolution—the process of small modifications occurring within the species level that can result in a new subspecies—is not the topic at hand. Rather, we are discussing macroevolution, which is exactly the type of which Darwin wrote and precisely the process through which our kind, Homo sapiens sapiens, came to be.

This would leave the biblical-literalist Christian with few appealing options. You could endorse a theory of Universal Common Descent, which has been espoused by Darwinians. Or, you could stand behind a theistic evolution/evolutionary creationism scheme, in which evolution has occurred precisely the way Darwinians say, but, essentially, the process was designed, and continues to be overseen, by god. It is not a random process, then, in the broadest sense, because its operating structure was designed by god.

If this were the case, and Darwinian evolution by natural selection was known to be true, how grievous would the injury to your worldview be? Would it throw everything you thought you knew about the nature of the universe (not to mention the nature of reality) into question? Would it lead to a crisis of faith and a newfound doubt in various metaphysical propositions proposed in the Bible? Or, as before with our time-travel trek, would a mere rejiggering suffice to patch up your worldview and make it solid once again?

All this rhetoric, at base, seeks to discover how central denial of Darwinian evolution by natural selection is to the biblical-literalist Christian worldview. Imagine your worldview as a Jenga tower. How important is the piece positing Genesis’ accuracy? If that piece were forced to be removed, would the tower topple?

Preface: Axiom, as explained by Wikipedia: “In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths.”

Rhology (and, apparently, Vox Veritatis) expressed concerns about my use of “faith” in laying my evidentialist foundation. The questions they jointly prepared make blindingly obvious their mutual misapprehension of the role “faith” actually played (a temporary one, analogous to scaffolding in building construction).

Below, find my attempt to disabuse them of their wrongheadedness.

Rhology: Keep in mind that the JN has retreated to this admission of the faith-scaffolding b/c it has become clear that his First Principle - that evidence is the best way for humans to approximate truth - cannot justify itself. Any attempt to do so ends up in an infinite regress.

Nihilist: Although it is clear one of your preferred debate strategies is to cheerlead any concession you believe you have won from your opponent, you are here pointing out something that I have never denied. My Philosophical First Principle (hereafter, “PFP”), best stated as “evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth,” is a postulate (axiom, premise, etc.). I have defined a PFP as the lens through which an individual interrogates the world in which he finds himself. Before one can commence said interrogation, one must procure said lens. That is, before one may employ a postulate (noun form), one must…well…postulate (verb form). This postulation could be described as an act of “faith,” if one were inclined toward biased word choice. I utilize the scaffolding analogy because, once one postulates, and thus has a postulate, no further postulation is required; one simply employs one’s postulate “to erect one’s tower.”

Rhology: 1) I know you didn't continue with the scaffolding of faith. Why didn't you keep relying on faith? After all, you consider that faith was sufficient to get you to your big First Principle that you find so attractive, while that FP could never get you there by itself.

Nihilist: This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the preceding discussion, which, although never laid out quite so explicitly by me, has been implied throughout our recent interactions. In order to obtain a postulate (axiom, premise, etc.), one must postulate; there is no getting around it. In that light, your first query makes little sense. You are essentially asking, “Since, in order to get a postulate, one must postulate, why not make postulation one’s postulate?” In raising such an objection, you effectively attempt to rule out postulates/axioms entirely.

Rhology: 2) Why did you choose this FP? It seems a completely arbitrary standard. Why not the equally-but-no-less-arbitrary "mustard is the best way to discover truth"? Mustard as FP is not self-justifying either, but one could just as easily make evidence-free faith appeals to it, just as you have to your evidentialist FP.

I don't expect the JN to go this route, but rather other commenters - the fact that mustard is a prima facie silly example makes no difference. Unless the argument for the evidentialist FP is successful, it is just as arbitrary as mustard.

Nihilist: I have described a PFP as being the lens through which an individual interrogates the world in which he finds himself. Here, let us focus on the word “lens.” I have worn glasses since third grade and, unfortunately, my vision is quite awful. Without my glasses, I would be completely nonfunctional…unable to work, drive, watch television or do much of anything. When I go to visit my ophthalmologist, he puts a machine in front of my face and proceeds to switch from lens to lens, based upon my guidance of what enhances and/or diminishes my vision. In choosing a PFP, one does essentially the same thing: In terms of interrogating the world of experience, which lens seems to make things most clear? Perhaps several lenses are acceptable…satisfactorily functional. However, it is only sensible to choose what appears to be the clearest, most sharp lens. For me, evidentialism represents 20/20 intellectual vision.

Also, I must say, your “mustard is the best way to discover truth” example seems a bit disingenuous. Remember that, generally speaking, in order to qualify as an axiom (postulate, premise, etc.), a notion must be self-evident. Looking at evidentialism first, “evidence” merely refers to “relevant facts” in the context of any given situation or point of contention. It would be difficult to argue that the usefulness of relevant facts is not self-evident. Conversely, the usefulness of mustard hardly seems self-evident by any conceivable standard. Also, in practical terms, I have no idea how mustard might be used for deducing and inferring truths that are more complex; it hardly seems a foundation upon which to build anything. Thus, your example suffers from definitional and practical problems.

Rhology: 3) The JN said:

I use faith once…as scaffolding…to lay my building’s foundation. This hardly equates to a life rife with faith appeals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure you would claim that your life is rife with appeals to evidence. That's the best way to discover truth, after all.

So it goes like this:

(top)

| Answer |

| Question |

| Evidentialist FP |

| Faith scaffolding |

(bottom)

You appeal to something more basic to answer less basic questions. In doing so, how is it an avoidance of appealing to the faith foundation-scaffolding? This question is meant to unmask atheists' widespread allergy to claiming that their position is faith-based. Faith is for wackos and fundies, after all, not for rational people like atheists with rational positions like atheism.

Nihilist: Your “illustration” is wrong because the evidentialist PFP does not rest upon the scaffolding of faith as you imply. Rather, the faith scaffolding permitted the evidentialist PFP to be laid. [That is, the act of postulation allowed one to obtain a postulate.] Think back to physical construction for a moment: A builder does not lay his foundation on top of his scaffolding; if he were to do so, the scaffolding would become an integral part of the building’s structure. And, by definition, scaffolding is not an integral part of a building’s structure. Rather, scaffolding is “a temporary framework used to support people and material in the construction or repair of buildings and other large structures.” Yes - one must postulate before one may employ a postulate; however, it is not the act of postulation that serves as a starting point for world-of-experience interrogation. Postulation merely allows the interrogatory starting point to be established. Once it is established, there is no further need for postulation; this is why, like scaffolding, it is “removed” from the tower.

Rhology: 4) In what way is this evidentialism thing a FIRST Principle since faith precedes it logically?

Nihilist: A foundational postulate allows one to build a rising tower of conclusions. The scaffolding of faith enables one to postulate.

A foundational supposition allows one to build a rising tower of conclusions. The scaffolding of faith enables one to suppose.

A PFP allows one to interrogate the world of experience. The scaffolding of faith enables one to lay a personal metaphysical foundation (from which to interrogate). Only once the foundation is laid can world-of-experience interrogation actually commence.

My Christian interlocutor Rhology and I have been continuing our ongoing debate in one of his “comboxes.” Because the extent to which my readership is identical to his is certainly questionable, I shall publish our most recent exchanges here. The overarching topic at hand is faith, and the degree to which I—an evidentialist—am dependent upon it.

On Monday, September 15, 2008, Rhology published a post entitled “No faith, just faith.” In it, he writes:

Since he (the Jolly Nihilist) has chosen a faith-based position for his First Principle, why not just go with "faith is the best way to discover truth"? Obviously evidence failed him in this question and faith resolved the problem. Why not just stick with that? Why go with what failed him in this most important, overarching question of First Principle?

That pithy provocation warranted an immediate response, quoted below:

You have raised this point on at least three occasions, so, rather than letting the question fester, I shall address it presently.

You are correct in saying I take evidence’s usefulness in human approximation of truth as a supposition or a postulate. (You use the loaded word “faith” in order to try to rouse discomfort in me; nevertheless, at least in this instance, I shall grant your biased word choice.) You attempt to equate my “faith” with the superstitions of Christians, seeming to say, “See? We are bound equally by blind faith!” In actuality, however, this similarity is much overstated.

Eventually, the following analogy breaks down (at least with respect to the practical realities of construction), but, nevertheless, it remains instructive. For me, faith is most accurately analogized as scaffolding, defined as “a temporary framework used to support people and material in the construction or repair of buildings and other large structures.”

In order to confront, analyze and interrogate the world in which one finds oneself (the world of experience, whether such is “really real” or a Cartesian Demon’s construct), one must begin somewhere. I call this analytical starting point the Philosophical First Principle (hereafter “PFP”). Because a PFP is foundational—a human’s first step toward interrogating the world in which he finds himself (that being, the world of experience)—it cannot be discovered or independently proved from other propositions. It is taken as a supposition or a postulate…as a point of faith.

I employ faith as scaffolding. Only with this scaffolding in place can I lay my building’s foundation, which is “Evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth.” With this foundation laid, dried and completely solid, I have no further need for my scaffolding (which, again, in this analogy, is faith). Instead of faith appeals, I continue erecting my building upon the dry, solid foundation (in my case, evidentialism).

I use faith once…as scaffolding…to lay my building’s foundation. This hardly equates to a life rife with faith appeals.

You repeatedly ask, “Since he (the Jolly Nihilist) has chosen a faith-based position for his First Principle, why not just go with ‘faith is the best way to discover truth?’ Obviously evidence failed him in this question and faith resolved the problem. Why not just stick with that?”

You might as well ask a Fortune 500 executive, whose company soon shall reside in a new Chicago office tower, why he does not simply arrange all the desks on the scaffolding.

The scaffolding is temporary, existing only to allow the building to be built. And for me, faith is mere scaffolding, permitting me to erect Evidentialist Tower.

Rhology quickly retorted with the following:

I am not equating our faith positions, actually. My faith position has actually quite a lot of justification for it, while yours does not. Your faith is blind, while mine is informed. So no, I wouldn't call them equal really.

Yes, one must begin somewhere. You begin with faith. Then you later have the gall to criticise me for having faith. It's very cheeky of you.

Nihilist: “Because a PFP is foundational—a human’s first step toward interrogating the world in which he finds himself (that being, the world of experience)—it cannot be discovered or independently proved from other propositions.”

Rhology: I hate to keep doing this, but you have said many times in the past that, for example: “If you believe those bare facts of reality require external grounding, I suggest you attempt to demonstrate such.” and “evidence (relevant facts) can be marshaled to demonstrate evidence’s utility. Because of this, my postulate is self-subsisting.”

I honestly don't know which of these you actually believe.

Nihilist: “I use faith once…as scaffolding…to lay my building’s foundation. This hardly equates to a life rife with faith appeals.”

Rhology: Why not use it more than once? If it is good for a foundation, why is it useless elsewhere? And you appeal to faith to form your very first principle. Thus all your life is based on faith - I'd call that “rife”, actually, yes.

Nihilist: “why he does not simply arrange all the desks on the scaffolding.”

Rhology: On the one hand, I see what you're saying.

However, the switching in and out of “faith is good and useful” to “faith is bad and useless” seems completely arbitrary. On what do you base your decision to switch building materials? What guides it?

My rejoinder reads as follows (with some minor modifications):

Rhology: “Yes, one must begin somewhere. You begin with faith. Then you later have the gall to criticise me for having faith. It's very cheeky of you.”

Nihilist: I suppose the factuality of your statement depends upon what you mean when you say, “begin with.” Faith is not my First Principle; faith is not the foundation upon which my worldview is erected. Instead, faith was merely the scaffolding that permitted me to lay down my foundation, which is evidentialism.

Also, I do not necessarily criticize you for having faith. You are a devout Christian and I am content to let you live a devoutly Christian life. I criticize those Christians who attempt to impose their values and moral viewpoints on others, who ought to be permitted to confect their own worldviews and live in accordance with them. After all, Rhology’s Metaphysical Foundation is precisely that; it does not overarch the world.

Rhology: “I hate to keep doing this, but you have said many times in the past that, for example: ‘If you believe those bare facts of reality require external grounding, I suggest you attempt to demonstrate such.’ and ‘evidence (relevant facts) can be marshaled to demonstrate evidence’s utility. Because of this, my postulate is self-subsisting.’

I honestly don't know which of these you actually believe.”

Nihilist: I shall respond to those quotes in reverse order.

When I say I can appeal to evidence to demonstrate evidence’s utility in the approximation of truth, I am not defending evidence with “other propositions.” Rather, I am defending evidence with evidence—defending one proposition with the very same proposition. This is why you often accuse me of question begging. However, my purpose in “begging the question” is different from what you might expect. I do not mean to confirm evidence’s utility via circular proof, but rather to show that evidentialism is a self-subsistent First Principle. The “question begging” exercise is a simple demonstration of self-subsistence. Faith (to yield, once again, to your biased word choice) is still required to lay my initial foundation.

When I reference “the bare facts of reality,” I am talking about the world of experience…the world in which one finds oneself. That world—the world of experience—simply is. It might be genuinely real or, indeed, it might be the fabrication of a Cartesian Demon. I cannot rule either possibility out. However, the world in which I find myself, irrespective of its veridical nature, is manifest, and I seek to interrogate it, using my chosen evidentialist First Principle. In short, with respect to the line you quoted, I have little patience for those who refuse to recognize the world of experience as simply existent.

Rhology: “Why not use it more than once? If it is good for a foundation, why is it useless elsewhere? And you appeal to faith to form your very first principle. Thus all your life is based on faith - I'd call that ‘rife’, actually, yes.”

Nihilist: You are conflating two ideas here, I think. When you say, “If it is good for a foundation, why is it useless elsewhere?” you seem to be referencing faith, even though faith is not my foundation—evidentialism is. Faith was merely temporary scaffolding, permitting the building to be built. It was transitory…not part of the finished structure.

Why do I not appeal to faith except to pave the way for my First Principle? Because, once I have selected a First Principle, it makes little sense to overthrow it for some other one, such as appeal to faith. If I laid a foundation for a skyscraper, why would I start building things elsewhere, rather than on the foundation I just established? Once I have a First Principle, that is to what I appeal. Faith was of utility only before the principle had been established…when I needed a place to start.

And, my life (and, implicitly, my understanding of the world) is not based on faith. Scaffolding was needed to lay my foundation, but, once that foundation was laid, my analytical processes became a natural extension of it. I appealed to faith once, to lay my groundwork; I now appeal to my principle.

Rhology: “On the one hand, I see what you're saying.

However, the switching in and out of ‘faith is good and useful’ to ‘faith is bad and useless’ seems completely arbitrary. On what do you base your decision to switch building materials? What guides it?”

Nihilist: There is no switch of building materials in my analogy. The scaffolding used to enable a building to be built, by definition, is temporary. It was always meant to be used and then removed. In order to lay down my evidentialist foundation, faith was required. So, for that period, faith was “good and useful.” Once the scaffolding was no longer required—because a solid foundation had been laid—it was taken away. This does not mean faith becomes “bad and useless” but only that its purpose had been served and it was no longer required. Faith was needed when there was no foundation of which to speak; now, I have evidentialism as a solid foundation upon which to build. Why revert back to the temporary framework?

Again, I recognize my scaffolding analogy is flawed, but I am trying to explain a point that practically invites misapprehension, even by those of sincere intent.

Conclusion: Faith indeed played a role in permitting my foundation—evidentialism—to be laid. However, once in possession of a foundation upon which to build, the temporary scaffolding (faith) became outmoded…no longer needed.

In sum, then, scaffolding was deployed, used and, finally, duly removed.

Prior to delving into the multifarious issues, I shall quote my own definitions of “Cosmic First Principle” and “Philosophical First Principle”…definitions with which Rhology never expressed disagreement.

I would define a Cosmic First Principle as one that, quite literally, explains everything: Such a principle would presuppose nothing (not even the coherency of “principle” as a concept), yet, in itself and through itself, illuminate everything. Such a principle would be true, active and vital before any consciousness was around to grasp or utilize it; that is, it would in no way be dependent on humans, our sentience or our thoughts. A Cosmic First Principle would be there—true, active and vital—even before matter condensed in the cosmos.

By contrast, a Philosophical First Principle is an indivisible, unsplittable foundation of human thought. Taking certain things (including, but not restricted to, one’s own existence, one’s own sentience and the existence of abstract concepts such as principles) as granted (all those things are manifest, by the way), such a principle aspires to be a roadmap for efficacious reasoning. [Think of it this way: “Here we are…sentient beings on this planet in this universe. How best might we harness our minds?”]

Rhology: First off, I'd like to point out that he hasn't answered the questions raised here.

Nihilist: I have addressed every relevant point in your post in our assorted comment box discussions. I have not had much to say because your attack on evidentialism was misguided from its conception: Not recognizing the distinction between a Cosmic First Principle (hereafter “CFP”) and Philosophical First Principle (hereafter “PFP”), you conflated them, criticizing one for not being the other. In other words, you complained my PFP was not sufficiently CFP, despite the fact that they are substantially different concepts.

Rhology: No one who reads his blog or his comments would think that he is unsure or agnostic about whether he's right, about whether he is pretty sure that evidence is the best way for humans to approximate truth, but if he doesn't defend his own position and if he destroys mine, then he's left drifting in a morass of agnosticism.

Nihilist: On its own terms, as a PFP, that is, a lens through which an individual interrogates the world in which he finds himself, my position has sustained no appreciable damage. Again, the entire foundation of your critique was unwarranted conflation. This is illustrated when, in your evidentialism post, you write, “I asked him for a, one, (1) First Principle, and he provides one that is totally inadequate, to the point that he has to smuggle in numerous other concepts that he didn't mention.” Evidentialism, as I embrace it, might be insufficient according to CFP standards but, once again, it is not a CFP.

Rhology: And notice how he's vacillating. One moment he's crying "axiom!" to get out of the infinite regress of asking for evidence for the evidence for the evidence for the evidence for the evidence for the idea that evidence is a good way to discover truth.

The very next minute he's saying "evidence (relevant facts) can be marshaled to demonstrate evidence’s utility", thereby utterly begging the question.

Nihilist: My evidentialist PFP is axiomatic (a postulate or supposition)…is foundational. However, self-subsistence can be tested and, fortunately, my PFP passes. I constantly cite the mathematics example, but I shall do it again because, apparently, you have not fully understood my point. “Mathematics is the only way humans can reach truth” is a self-annihilating postulate because one cannot appeal to mathematics in order to show mathematics is the only way humans can reach truth. By contrast, “Evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth” is a self-subsisting PFP because one can marshal evidence to demonstrate evidence’s utility. You might call the exercise—drawing on evidence to substantiate evidence—question begging; in actuality, it is proof of self-subsistence. Indeed, it is definitive demonstration that my PFP does not annihilate itself.

Rhology: The next minute he's differentiating between a "Cosmic" 1st Principle (CFP) and a "Philosophical" 1st Principle (PFP) and claiming that his PFP is useful for observing and living in this universe. This... "cosmos", if you will. Hmm. Seems a little arbitrary.

Nihilist: This is just semantics-driven taunting. Call one “Larry” and the other “Moe,” for all I care. All that matters is recognizing two separate concepts.

I do not have to deal with the “brain in a vat” question because the location of my brain—inside my skull—is manifest.

Rhology: This deals with the concept in point 4 here. He's begging the question again.

"Well, obviously I'm not a brain in a vat. My brain's right here!"

For one thing, he's never directly observed his brain. He's observed his SCALP, not his brain. I don't encourage him to try it, but to stop begging this question, a bone saw would need to be involved.

Nihilist: Although I have never directly observed my brain, it has been seen before. When I was one year old, I fell down the basement stairs and suffered a skull fracture; I needed to undergo surgery and have a metal plate installed in my skull. During this delicate procedure, the doctors saw my brain: It was there, in my skull, exactly where it belonged. There is no reason to suppose that it wandered off in the intervening years. Anyway, I am still a living, thinking, conscious human…surely my brain must get some credit for that!

Rhology: Also, if you're a brain in a vat, you are simply being deceived by the electrical stimuli being fed into your brain by the evil alien/demon in charge of creating your illusions. Go ahead and marshal evidence that this is not the case.

Nihilist: Enter the Cartesian Demon, who is inventing the elaborate illusion I call reality. Can I be certain there is no Cartesian Demon? No, I cannot. It always shall remain a possibility (the likelihood of which is essentially inscrutable). However, in fact, the whole question is irrelevant. Here, I yield to Richard Carrier, writing in “Sense and Goodness without God.” The context is the consistency of our cosmos, and Carrier’s discussion dances dangerously close to addressing PFP (that, once again, being a foundational axiom for interrogating the world in which one finds oneself).

“…if the demon were really this consistent in giving us results, through which we satisfy our every goal and desire, there would hardly be any intelligible difference between what we call ‘reality’ and the world the demon is inventing for us. [The Cartesian Demon’s construct] would be reality, in every sense of the word we normally use. And since we observe some methods [of discovering truth] to work better than others, and indeed some work best of all, a Cartesian Demon would have to be arranging it this way, constructing reality for us solely in accord with a fixed plan it has chosen. In that case we have just as much reason to pursue the relevant methods for discovering that plan, and to abandon the bad ones, so we can gain the reward of a successful life experience from this mischievous demon. In other words…even if [the Cartesian Demon theory is true], nothing significant changes for us regarding method [of truth discovery].”

The only world with which to be concerned is the world in which one finds oneself—that is, the world of experience. If my existence is the elaborate illusion of a Cartesian Demon, this confected reality is, in fact, reality for me. The “actual reality” of my brain in a vat is not the world of my experience. With that, its relevance vanishes.

Second, the entirety of your line of reasoning is based upon what I deem to be a fallacious notion: that the bare facts of reality cannot be the bare facts of reality, but, instead, require “grounding.” The cosmos exists—this is manifest.

Rhology: 1) Prove the cosmos exists, and that you are not being deceived by a grand illusion.

Nihilist: Cartesian Demon. Redux. The world of experience is the only world with which I must concern myself. For me, the reality that I experience is reality. Some gratuitous reality beyond it, even if existent, has absolutely no relevance to my life: My consciousness is here…not there.

Rhology: 2) I love it - the JN wants me to bring forth evidence all the time for the existence of TGOTB, but when it comes to other things that make him uncomfy, all of a sudden, things are just "manifest". Arbitrary, again.

3) Very well then - TGOTB's existence is just a bare fact of reality. It doesn't require grounding. See, wasn't that easy when we just invoke the ipse dixit? Perhaps the JN thinks he's the infallible Pope of Reason.

Nihilist: One cannot claim just anything to be manifest; in order for that word to be applicable, the fact at hand must be blindingly obvious: The sun’s existence is manifest; humankind’s existence is manifest; water’s existence is manifest. Your particular god character could never be described as such…could never be placed alongside the afore listed bare facts. If nothing else, my favorite Christopher Hitchens quote from “god is not Great,” in which the Chinese express bafflement as to why, if god has revealed himself, he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing them, goes to show just how far from manifest Yahweh is.

Rhology: He's already shown he's willing to put on and take off the Pope of Morality hat when it suits him; now his authority apparently extends to even more areas of life than I originally realised.

Nihilist: I am endlessly bewildered by your morality-related snipes. I have been unfailingly clear in my rejection of moral truth. There is no reason to believe anything is objectively moral or objectively immoral; it is merely a matter of person-by-person opinion, analogous to whether one likes a film or whether one finds a joke amusing. To imply I claim to divine moral truth is outrageous, because I deny moral truth’s very existence. Any moral judgments I render are pure opinion…no different from my annual Top 10 Films list.

Abstract concepts such as principles can be dealt with by the human species—this, per the pattern, is also manifest.

Rhology: Humans may be able to "deal with" these concepts, but this speaks not at all to the question of whether they're true or not. The JN may have lost track of just what we're arguing here.

Nihilist: I am merely showing that the existence of principles does not need to be “grounded” within my PFP; the existence of abstract thought is manifest. That is, in the world in which we find ourselves, abstract thought exists…it is a bare fact of this world. Therefore, my PFP does not need, somehow, to “account” for it.

[Of CFPs] First, I share Russell’s concern that such musings exist solely in the land of metaphysics, having no real relationship with the world of experience.

Rhology: Your PFP is also 100% metaphysical, as we've seen and as you've admitted, sometimes (when it suits you). You can't prove evidence is a good way to discover truth by bringing forth evidence. What is your evidence for that?
See how he's forcing us to regress in our conversation? Suddenly we're where we were 3 months ago!

Nihilist: Your invocation of the Cartesian Demon theory ably evinces the extent to which you are wallowing in empty metaphysical musings. I, by clear contrast, am concerned with the world of experience. My PFP accepts certain things as “granted,” among those the cosmos, my species, me as an individual, my sentience, etc. I look the world of experience square in the eye and, with my PFP and the intellectual tools with which I have been endowed, attempt to interrogate it. As we shall see shortly, when we come to your “Flying Catfish” critique, you are doing everything but confronting the world of experience.

Ultimately, in terms of voluntary actions, one always follows one’s desire.

Rhology: I had asked him a question about morality - what one SHOULD do. He responds with a long paragraph about what humans DO. Apparently what IS is what OUGHT, but he doesn't always believe that. If he did, he would never, ever criticise any action, ever, b/c it IS. He does criticise certain actions, however, on moral grounds, so he doesn't really believe this. It's hard to talk to someone who's so inconsistent.

Nihilist: In fact, you asked, “Is there any compelling reason you could offer someone as to WHY they SHOULD accept your FP over mine?” This was not framed as a moral question but, instead, a practical one. To your practical question, I gave a practical answer:

Every voluntary action undertaken by a human is an attempt (successful or unsuccessful) to fulfill a desire. Suppose you are standing in the dining room, with the kitchen to your left and the den to your right. If you turn left and walk into the kitchen, it is because you desired to do so. Every voluntary action represents an attempt at desire fulfillment. Sometimes, desires are conflicting. Suppose you are a college student and your alarm has roused you. It is 8AM…time for class. Part of you desires to roll over and go back to sleep. Another part of you desires to rise, dress and go to class. If you do get up and start moving, it is only because you desired to do so—and desired it more than staying in bed. In fact, in the case of directly contradictory desires, one desire becomes dominant and the other ceases to be a genuine desire. Ultimately, in terms of voluntary actions, one always follows one’s desire.

That rambling preface was required to show my PFP’s worth. If evidence is an excellent way to approximate truth—and it is—then people would benefit from following my PFP because accurate, truthful knowledge enables them to align their behaviors with their desires. Every voluntary action undertaken by a human is an attempt to fulfill a desire, but if said human is filled with false information, his attempt at desire fulfillment might be entirely wrongheaded and counterproductive. Only with accurate knowledge can desire and action be aligned effectively. Thus, if I were evangelizing my PFP, I would make exactly this argument. If one uses evidence as a guiding light, the effectiveness of voluntary actions is maximized.

If you intended to pose a question of objective moral fact then I have no answer, because I reject objective moral fact’s existence.

You also referenced self-revelation through the Bible, but I do not see how that is a core essentiality.

Rhology: It is not an essential attribute for God, but objective revelation is essential for our epistemology. If we don't know anything about God, then... we don't know anything about God. This will be a very important point as these discussions advance.

Nihilist: And, in my reply to your original post, I anticipated this answer and responded in advance, saying, “I could simply say ECC condescended to reveal itself to me, and I was charged with passing along the news of the revelation.” Perhaps said deity seared its message into my brain, so I could never forget even the most piddling detail. Or, perhaps, over a period of many days, the deity shared an extensive revelation, from which I composed a thousand-page gospel. Yahweh/the Bible are not the only conceivable revelatory sources. Thus, lack of knowledge of their nature is not an intrinsic problem for my confected gods.

The Green God possesses:

* Omnipresence

* Omnipotence

* Omniscience

* Ability to create this universe and having done so

* Functionality as “grounds” for all logic, rationality, induction, and morality

PLUS...

When the deity, from his ethereal perch, looks down upon his wondrous creation, he "sees" everything with a slight tint of green. You see, this deity likes green, and so, his vision is tinted as such.

Rhology: 1) Maybe TGOTB *does* see everythg tinted green.

2) How is the Green God omnipresent if he has physical eyes with which he sees "green", like we do?

3) How do you know this god exists, and more to the point, how do you know he sees everythg tinted green?

Nihilist: 1) Perhaps he does. However, he could not simultaneously see everything tinted exclusively in green and everything tinted exclusively in red. He sees either with green tinting, red tinting, tinting of another color or no tinting at all. It could not simultaneously be exclusively green and exclusively red. That means Green God and Red God—although sharing identical core essentialities—are certifiably different. And, given those essentialities and an objective revelation to, say, me, you would have no justification for dismissing either as my CFP.

2) I never said anything about “physical eyes” or sight identical to our own. If a being is omnipotent, and wishes to see everything with a colorized tint, it can do so. If it could not do so, it would not be omnipotent.

3) As already noted, one could claim objective revelation, either with the message seared permanently into one’s brain or translated into a written gospel. The Bible is hardly the only imaginable gospel to claim itself “revealed truth.”

The Melodic God possesses:

* Omnipresence

* Omnipotence

* Omniscience

* Ability to create this universe and having done so

* Functionality as “grounds” for all logic, rationality, induction, and morality

PLUS...

* There is a melody that this deity finds endlessly pleasing. As such, in a ceaseless loop, that melody "plays" in the deity's vast consciousness. It does not dominate the consciousness, but serves as permanent "background music."

Rhology: 1) TGOTB *does* have endless background music.

2) You even admitted: "It does not dominate the consciousness". Precisely. This god is no different from TGOTB.

Nihilist: 1, 2) Perhaps he does. However, he could not have the specific background music you described (omitted here for space) and simultaneously have entirely different background music (say, reminiscent of heavy metal). Either he experiences the background music you described, the background music I described, background music of another variety or no background music at all. He could not simultaneously experience exclusively your music and exclusively my music. This means every god that has specific, exclusive background music is distinct from every other god that has different specific, exclusive background music. Given an objective revelation of each, you have an infinite set of god characters, each fully capable of serving as a CFP.

Of course, mixing and matching “green tinting,” “red tinting” and “heavy metal” variables is terribly silly; nevertheless, it is necessary to make a critical point. As long as a god character possesses the specified core essentialities (and Rhology has not objected to my list) and has condescended to offer revelation—if only to one individual—that god could be used as a CFP. And, as we have seen, for every exclusive color tinting and every exclusive background music tune, we have a recipe for different gods…infinite varieties of different gods…easily one for every human who has ever lived. Such is the folly of CFPs, which comprise little more than—presto!—defining things into existence.

Let us resolve to restrict our concern to the actual, hard, manifest world of experience.

The first, and most important, realization to which a thinking person must come is that the cosmos—by all evidentiary indications—is purposeless and dispassionate…striving toward no goal, operating with no aim, hoping for no particular result. Some commentators have called the cosmos an immoral place or, in my own case, an unjust one; to do so is mistaken. “Good” and “evil”…“just” and “unjust”…“moral” and “immoral” are judgments that cannot be made in the absence of purpose; to declare the universe an evil place is equally ludicrous as judging one’s car to be wicked or one’s computer to be morally wretched. The cosmos’ utter indifference precludes all such characterizations.

Even if the universe does have a purpose—and there is not a single credible reason to believe that is the case—there are no grounds to suppose that humans are part of it. The universe, whose estimated age is 13.73 billion years (plus or minus 120 million years), long preceded Homo sapiens sapiens (estimated age: perhaps 100,000 years), a species that is a newcomer even on Earth, which itself is a tiny, long-forgotten-about speck of stardust. Indeed, Earth is just one of, conservatively, a billion billion planets strewn about the cosmos. The folly of thinking Earth to be cosmically important is exceeded only by imagining one’s own species to be so.

Let us make a few things clear. If a global pandemic were to strike tomorrow, and the entire human race were rendered extinct in 30 days, “indifference” would vastly overstate the cosmos’ concern with such a development. Bertrand Russell, a thinker who courageously rejected the temptations of human ego, remarked in “A Free Man's Worship” (1903) that it is very nearly certain “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins….” The upshot, of course, is that, although our day-to-day travails seem to be of great importance, none of our deeds, nor anything that happens to us, is of any enduring cosmic significance. One day our solar system shall end, and it shall be as if none of us ever existed.

Must, then, we be consigned to a life of despair? I think not. Recognizing our place in the grand scheme—a place of supreme insignificance—does little to diminish the pleasures one may experience. The triviality of our existence, as a species and as individuals, does not make, for example, family vacations any less pleasurable. It does not make a joke any less funny. It does not make a swimming pool any less refreshing, nor does it lessen the succulence of a juicy steak.

Yes, we are subject to an uncaring, unfeeling universe. Yes, we are utterly impotent when faced with inevitable death. Yes, all our achievements and pleasures are fleeting, much like our existence as a sentient life form. However, our species would be in a sorry state, indeed, if mere recognition of this basic truth were to doom us to a life of despair.

The neophyte to issues scientific and philosophical should not let the abstruseness toward which these conversations tend leave him at a loss. There is but one life we have been afforded. I urge readers to live it to the maximum, wringing pleasure from wherever it can be wrung.

One never knows when the chaos out of which the cosmos formed might again reign supreme.

As I read your latest vigorous broadside against metaphysical naturalism and my humble articulation thereof, one word irresistibly came screaming to my mind: gold. No, this does not reference what some might consider your 24-karat intellect. Rather, it appears you are attempting, with much strain but negligible success, to split the atom. All this shall be fully explicated, but first a brief digression.

Suppose you have a block of gold and you wish to break it down into smaller pieces. Obviously, this is easy enough to do, so you crack it apart until you have several hundred small pieces of gold. But suppose you want really, really small pieces. Well, you could take a few of the smallest chunks you have and dice them up further, until they are really infinitesimally small. And you could repeat this process without end, creating smaller and smaller pieces of gold, right? Actually, no, you could not. As Richard Dawkins (in service of a different point) explained in “The God Delusion,” “Why shouldn’t you cut one of those pieces in half and produce an even smaller smidgen of gold? The regress in this case is decisively terminated by the atom. The smallest possible piece of gold is a nucleus consisting of exactly 79 protons and a slightly larger number of neutrons, surrounded by a swarm of 79 electrons. If you ‘cut’ gold any further than the level of the single atom, whatever else you get it is not gold. The atom provides a natural terminator….” In the case of gold division, the infinite regress is thwarted by the atom. The atom terminates the series.

Well, what then is a First Principle, philosophically speaking? A First Principle is a broad supposition—yes, a supposition—about the nature of reality. This supposition, once chosen, forms a foundation upon which grander conclusions can be stacked. Said another way, a First Principle is a postulate, from which to argue and with which to build. Because a First Principle is foundational—that is, it cannot be deduced from any other assumption or proposition—it cannot be “split” or independently proved. The best that can be said is that the postulate does not contradict itself. My preferred example of a self-annihilating axiom is “Mathematics is the only way humans can reach truth.” This First Principle fails because one cannot appeal to mathematics in order to show mathematics is the only way humans can reach truth. As such, it annihilates itself. My First Principle—that being, evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth—is materially different from the mathematics example because evidence (relevant facts) can be marshaled to demonstrate evidence’s utility. Because of this, my postulate is self-subsisting.

What, then, of your objections? Clearly, you are attempting to confect an infinite regress where none actually exists. Your series of “can you supply evidence” questions is analogous to trying to divide that smidgen of gold just a little bit further. However, just as the atom provides a natural terminator to gold division (whatever else results from further division, it is not gold), the First Principle provides a natural terminator to the series of questions. The First Principle is primary—step number one. Try as you might to dice it up, it is indivisible—or, at least, following subsequent division, you no longer would be dealing with the postulate (any more than you could split a gold atom and still have gold). As such, it is enough to say my axiom—unlike the mathematics example—is self-subsisting and internally coherent. And thus, on top of this supposition, all my conclusions are built.

Why do I feel confident in my First Principle? The reasons are innumerable. First, throughout humankind’s history, evidence has proven its worth, quite literally, a million times over. The most reliable systems of justice currently in existence revolve around the presentation of evidence. The most effective medical systems in the world are those that discover the relevant facts of illness and base their treatments thereon. In our everyday lives, we all operate according to evidence: When we catch a weather report predicting rain (evidence), we carry an umbrella (utilization thereof). When we notice brake lights illuminate in front of us (evidence), we slow our own vehicle (utilization thereof). When we (hazily) see a knife protruding from our belly and blood gushing everywhere (evidence), we get the knife removed and the wound treated (utilization thereof). The usefulness of relevant facts is manifest…is self-evident…precisely the kind of thing for which one should look in a First Principle.

Another benefit of my chosen postulate is that, far from starting me at the finish line, it could lead me anywhere. My evidentialist axiom could lead me to atheism or theism…to Christianity or Hinduism…to naturalism or supernaturalism. Even now, certain evidence would make me accept Christianity’s truth. For instance, god could speak to every living human being on the planet, sharing precisely the same message and offering exactly the same instructions vis-à-vis salvation. Some people might still reject the deity but, at the least, every human alive would possess direct spoken knowledge of god’s wishes. Alternately, Yahweh, in an instant, could carve his name onto the Moon. Or, on a lark, god could rearrange the planets in our solar system. [Presumably, given his omnipotence, god capriciously could swap Earth and Pluto, yet maintain the solar system’s stability and keep Earth’s creatures alive.] Prayer in Jesus’ name could result in amputees re-growing their missing limbs. Or, spectacularly devout Christian believers could have unexplainable healing powers, along the lines of limb regeneration. Evidentialism in no way precludes acceptance of Christianity’s truth; it simply requires actual evidence. Your postulate, by contrast, does equate to starting the race at the finish line. Atheism vs. Theism? Already answered. Christianity vs. Hinduism? Already answered. Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism? Already answered. Ad infinitum. When you describe your First Principle as being “far fuller,” you unwittingly verify my “start-at-the-finish-line” objection.

There is nothing more to add in rebutting section one, so I next shall turn to the scriptural issues on which we have touched.

In response to my observation that the New Testament is not unanimous in its stated path to salvation, you write, “Oh please. Are you seriously proposing that you are familiar enough with biblical hermeneutics and exegesis to make a serious argument on these grounds?” To my point that a decent argument could be crafted for salvation being granted by means other than saving faith, you respond, “Yes, please do. Make it a post on your blog and let's see how well you do.” Such a post shall not be composed, because it would have as much place on my blog as a post arguing that fairy dust—not pixie dust—is emitted from pixie wings. I do not care about such issues. Suffice it to remark that the documents from which the New Testament was cobbled together were written by several different authors, each of whose theological ideas had unique accents and distinctions. The differences between Mark and Luke, for example, rise above piddling storyline inconsistencies; the New Testament’s several authors did not have identical theological views (although, compared to the apocrypha, they do fall in line) and your claim to absolutely uniform consistency is not in evidence.

The other scriptural issue with which to contend relates to Jesus’ failed prophecy regarding the imminence of his second coming. In my initial communication with you, I quoted Matthew 16:27-28, whereas, in my second post, I quoted Matthew 24:25-35. You respond, “Oy vey. This is exactly what I mean. You jump from Matt 16 to Matt 24 and hope no one will notice! Did you even try to read ch 17-23 before jumping all the way to Matt 24? Why not just go whole hog and insist that I apply the same hermeneutical principles from the genealogy of Matt 1 to Matt 24?” Responding to my declaration that the weight of the evidence pointed to a failed prophecy, you write, “Well, since you didn't offer a counterargument nor present an exegesis of this Matt 24 psg, one can only guess at how you came to that conclusion.”

I do not know the degree to which you respect C.S. Lewis’ biblical scholarship, but I assume you are aware that, according to Lewis, my selection from Matthew 24 contains “the most embarrassing verse in the Bible” (Matthew 24:34). My reason for bringing up both passages was their similarity of language and seeming similarity of prediction. And, whereas, for my original selection, you could employ the excuse of Jesus’ transfiguration, that particular excuse is not available for my second selection. In any case, this also seems to me not to be particularly important. Suffice it to note that historians agree that first century Christians expected Jesus’ return to be imminent—as in, before they tasted of death. Although, of course, the first gospel was not written until around 70 CE, Jesus’ apocalyptic sayings seemingly convinced Paul, who expected the second coming of Jesus in his near future and during his own lifetime. Please consider 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:2-11.

In this area of your response, you say I come across as an atheist fundamentalist. You write, “You just KNOW all this is nonsense and you don't NEED to prove it. It's OBVIOUS. To EVERYONE. Except MORONS and FLAT-EARTHERS….” Your comments here remind me of something written by David Hume in his piece on miracles. Hume writes, for a just reasoner, “a miracle, supported by any human testimony, [is] more properly a subject of derision than of argument.” In the case of, for example, Matthew’s attestation to hordes of zombies roaming about Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53), derision is indeed the best counterargument.

My disproof? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

For a claim such as zombies, that disproof is as sound and devastating as possibly could be mounted. However, I rarely take that argumentative tack.

You addressed several peripheral issues, but I think only three warrant further consideration. First is the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG), which, although your preferred argument for the existence of god, I characterize as philosophical prestidigitation. In response to my assertion that I can “prove” the Ethereal Cosmic Catfish (ECC) using TAG just as easily as you can “prove” Yahweh with it, you write, “And I already explained why that is full of hot air.” In fact, you have not, so I shall restate the point concisely. TAG is the kind of argument that depends upon the nature of god in order to work; that is, certain of god’s attributes make TAG effective. [This is why, for example, you say TAG could not be used to prove Baal or some such deity.] However, you have failed to prove that every jot and tittle of Yahweh’s nature is essential for TAG to work. Unless and until you prove that, one rightly assumes only certain core elements of Yahweh’s nature are required. That being the case, I could endow ECC with the core essentialities that make TAG functional, and then add sundry variables to ensure ECC is different from Yahweh. After so doing, I could deploy TAG to prove ECC, and use the Catfish as my metaphysical foundation. That such an exercise could be done ably demonstrates the fatuousness of the argument; it is little different from Anselm’s ontological argument, as previously noted. If conjuring god with this trick, you might as well wave a magic wand and pull a rabbit from your hat.

Second, you express concerns about Carl Sagan’s observations. You accuse me of being “a product of Western-centrism” when I say that one’s chosen flavor of religion tends to be determined by parental/societal inculcation and coincidence of geography. Your countervailing evidence is (a) there are more born-again Christians in China than in the US, (b) there is a very significant missionary movement in India by Indians, and (c) South Korea sends more missionaries overseas per capita than any other country. These facts would mean more, however, if we did not live in a globalized world. Christians are extraordinarily media savvy, spreading their message worldwide through television, radio and even cinema. Moreover, Christians boast a robust missionary movement, familiarizing third-world-country dwellers with their superstition. Far more convincing to me (and the late Dr. Sagan) would be independent revelation from god himself, directed to people who had never previously heard of Yahweh or Christianity. You cite China, which reminds me of my favorite quote from Christopher Hitchens’ “god is not Great.” Hitchens writes, “One recalls the question that was asked by the Chinese when the first Christian missionaries made their appearance. If god has revealed himself, how is it that he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing the Chinese?” Whatever deities might have haunted Chinese history, none was distinguishably Yahweh. This is telling. Imagine if, around 2000 BCE, worship of Yahweh had simultaneously arisen in the Middle East, China, the Americas and central Africa. What compelling evidence that would have been! In actuality, primitive populations begin to worship Yahweh when believers in Yahweh arrive at their shores.

Finally, you are uncomfortable with my charge that Yahweh has an idolatrous fetish for free will. So what is idolatry? It is worship of any cult image, idea or object (usually in opposition to the monotheistic god character). I chose this descriptor largely because, in traditional Christian thought, god is characterized as loving. For the word “loving” to be comprehensible in the context of god, it must mean the same thing as “loving” in the context of humans: We are familiar with, and can understand, this definition. If, in the context of god, “loving” has a mysterious alternate meaning, then you might as well say god is “oglivok” because both statements would convey no actual information. [This is why I have said, for the statement “god is knowledgeable and/or powerful” to be meaningful, those words must be defined identically as in human affairs. Mysterious alternate definitions make such declarations incomprehensible.] In human affairs, to characterize an individual as loving is to say he has loving intentions and acts upon them regularly. No human who consigned billions of people to a place of endless, agonizing torture could be considered loving. Because you believe god does damn people by the billions, something must be undoing his loving intentions. The standard Christian answer is human free will. God’s devotion to human free will is such that he permits people to make their own choices, even choices that shall result in consignment to eternal agony. Because god’s loving intentions are unraveled by his affection for free will, I rightly observe god, if existent, has an idolatrous fetish for the free will idea.

None of the other points is substantial enough to justify extending this already-lengthy diatribe. However, I must comment on this curiosity: “I pray for your eventual repentance and salvation.” Thank you, Rhology. And I, for my part, shall sacrifice a goat and castrate a sheep on your behalf in order to appease Baal, who is well known as a jealous and angry god. I am sure there is a suitable altar in the Tri-State Region.

In all seriousness, I give you my best. I retain hope that the purest water of reason still—some day—might touch your lips, washing away the unfortunate stain of superstitious primitivism. Yes, the first jarring “splash” might shock you, but this is only the jolt of rising from slumber to brilliant wakefulness.

Warm regards,

Dan

My concluding salvo…

“This type of authoritarianism—I call it moral narcissism—is the point of comparison.”

Rhology: Then where are your cries of "atheofascist" over The Dawkins' calling child abuse immoral? Why restrict this to the Abrahamic religions? There are nearly as many targets for your "-ofascist" label as there are religions out there. Why engage in such special pleading?

Nihilist: I condemn everybody who, after formulating their moral opinions, decides those opinions ought to be inflicted on other people against their will. I do not take issue with Dr. Dawkins because, to me, his argument has less to do with the immorality of teaching children the doctrine of hell and more to do with whether, given the facts of the doctrine’s teaching, it falls under the legal definition of child abuse. One can make a legalistic argument without delving into the morality morass. [I offer no judgment about the legalistic case’s merit.]

Speaking strictly from my own perspective now, I single out Christians and Muslims for the “ofascist” designation because I concur with Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” When one believes a patently ludicrous notion, such as the divine inspiration and absolute perfection of a single book (a book written during our species’ bawling intellectual infancy, no less!), from that notion can spring what I would consider atrocities.

Your own comment box remark is illustrative: “So [if god] had said that it is necessary to prevent homosexuals from copulating, it is every human's responsibility to do so.” Presumably, then, if god had said it is necessary to castrate all practicing homosexuals, and then drench oneself in their spurting blood, you would agree it is every human’s responsibility to do so. Or, if god had said, every Sunday, it is necessary to torture all heathens prolongedly, you would agree it is every human’s responsibility to do so.

Your First Principle is the absolute inerrancy of a single book, from which you unquestioningly take your marching orders. You toss aside common sense, popular wisdom and other tools upon which humans rely for fear they are imperfect as compared to your text. This unshakeable loyalty, to a 2000-year-old cobbled-together tome, which could have contained anything, given the happenstance of history, is so frightening to me that merely assigning the “ofascist” label is being generous.

“However, I am doing no such thing”

Rhology: OK, so relativism is neither better nor worse than authoritarianism.

What's your argument, then, for choosing one over the other? Just whatever you feel like that day, or most days? Whether you have the wherewithal to inflict your ideas upon others or not?

Nihilist: Despite your question, I have been absolutely clear on this, so either you did not read or did not comprehend. Neither relativism nor authoritarianism could be judged moral or immoral in any objective sense, given our demonstrable moral ignorance. [Make a moral statement and then try to prove it—from square one—with no presuppositional appeals. If objective moral “laws” exist, they should be like the universe’s physical constants…unaffected by one’s viewpoint.] In light of this demonstrable moral ignorance, one can judge relativism coherent and authoritarianism incoherent. I am a moral relativist (“moral skeptic” is more accurate) because I strive to behave coherently. I do not impose my evidence-bankrupt moral opinions on others.

“Because it makes no sense for one to be coercive with respect to things about which one is ignorant.”

Rhology: This falls victim to the constant problem that your worldview provides you no way to say OUGHT. It's all just IS.

It may make no sense, but so what? Maybe Joe feels like it. Where's the prescriptive power in your statement? Why SHOULD Joe do that which makes sense? There's a reason we call these questions "moral" questions, as opposed to "arithmetic" or "fluid dynamics", you know.

If these are just opinions on your part, again, where's the prescriptive power? Why SHOULD anyone agree?

Why even make such statements? Why not just think them and be done with it? I'm serious.

Nihilist: My evidentialist principle, although lacking objective moral standards at this time, certainly offers the potential to make “ought” statements. Suppose Axelrod is standing in his living room, and he genuinely wants to go outside. There is a locked door separating him from the great outdoors. If he wishes to go outside, he OUGHT to go to the door, unlock it, open it and step out; that would be coherent behavior. If he wishes to go outside, he OUGHT NOT to walk right into the locked door; that would be incoherent behavior. Furthermore, suppose Comstock genuinely wishes to see a comedy film. However, at his local multiplex, only two films are being screened: American History X and The Naked Gun. If he wishes to see a comedy, he OUGHT to see The Naked Gun and OUGHT NOT to see American History X. No moral judgments, objective or subjective, have been rendered, but we have arrived at clear, coherent “ought” statements. In truth, the only prescriptive powers I lack are those related to areas of demonstrable ignorance.

Incoherency arises in attempting to be coercive with respect to things about which one is ignorant. Ponder “best color” and “best film,” which are analogous to “moral behavior” and “immoral behavior.” It would be incoherent for me, an aficionado of red, to demand that you renounce green and recognize the intrinsic superiority of my color. It would be incoherent for me, a fan of Mulholland Dr., to demand that you throw aside your favorite film and recognize the superiority of mine. These would be manifestly incoherent behaviors, and I do not shy from identifying that. The same goes for inflicting arbitrary moral opinions on others.

We previously have touched on the fact that, even though your worldview does afford you the right to make objective moral judgments, said judgments are mere derivatives of your First Principle…offshoots of your personal metaphysical foundation. You have failed to explain why, if you live in, say, Oklahoma, your metaphysical foundation should hold any relevance for two homosexuals living in Detroit: Your First Principle is the method by which you interrogate the world. It does not overarch the world itself; the world is not captive to Rhology’s mind.

If existence affords you a metaphysical foundation, it affords one to every person. Setting aside issues of law, if you may live in accordance with your own First Principle, so too may everyone else.

“it makes no sense for laws to be religiously derived.”

Rhology: 1) Go start your own country and see how far you get with that.

2) Oh, the USSR already tried that. Well, maybe you can do better than they did.

3) On what basis would you argue that atheism would be able to justify laws of religious freedom? Humans have no universal rights on atheism. Freedom is not a mandate on atheism.

Nihilist: You have committed gross intellectual dishonesty: You snipped a few words from a sentence, and pretended as though your snippet was my complete thought. Here is the proper quote: “Rather, I contend that, in a country with constitutionally enshrined freedom of religion (and its negative, freedom from religion), it makes no sense for laws to be religiously derived.” [Your choice to snip words from a sentence reminds me of Roger Ebert’s complaint that a word like “fun” will be attributed to him in a movie advertisement, when his real sentence was something like, “This movie is absolutely no fun.”]

If there is to be true freedom of religion—equality of faiths before the law—the government cannot have one religion (or even a few) as its legal system’s foundation. Such is antithetical to freedom of religion: If all religions are equal, Christianity cannot be “more equal” than the rest.

I shall answer in parts, as this seems to demand:

1. Objective judgments vis-à-vis laws can be made without appealing to religion…indeed, without appealing to morality at all. In a democracy or republic, the government works for its citizens, and must comport itself in a way representative of the citizenry’s demands. If a democratic government is formed and the citizens task it with promoting societal stability and preserving individual liberty, that government can create laws that enable it to perform its tasks. Kidnapping and murder could be outlawed because they cause chaotic instability and abridge victims’ liberty. The government need not wade into morality at all; it needs only look at its mandate and figure out which laws shall permit it to complete its duties.

2. The USSR represented nothing more than exchanging one dogma for another. I would argue that, in some sense, the laws in the USSR were religiously derived, in that Marxism/Leninism was imposed with a dogmatic, nay, religious fanaticism.

3. If a new democracy or republic were to arise, and the citizenry wished to enjoy complete freedom of religion, then the government could make it a constitutional tenet, as a way of serving the people for whom it works. We need not try to decipher cosmic truth; we need only to know the priorities of the people for whom the government works. We are not endowed by a creator with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; rather, we value those things, and assign government with safeguarding them (preferably via constitution).

“Recognition of moral ignorance does not forbid formulation of moral opinion.”

Rhology: If only your camp would extend such courtesy to ID and not deny ID-ers tenure, a voice, etc, all the while thinking they were ignorant.

Does that work anywhere else? Recognition of ignorance in particle physics does not forbid formulation of opinion on black holes.

Recognition of chemical ignorance does not forbid formulation of opinion on whether I should mix ammonia and bleach and inhale the results, does it?

That's special pleading.

Nihilist: Apparently, it is time for the “square-peg-in-a-round-hole” routine, because your examples are unanalogous; they are mere red herrings employed for obfuscative purposes. Below, please find examples of issues about which we truly are ignorant.

• What is the best color in the spectrum?
• What is the best number between one and 20?
• What is the best film ever made?
• What is the funniest joke ever written?

These are issues about which we are ignorant because, even if facts are discoverable, we have no certainty as to what a relevant fact might be or how the facts might converge to form a conclusion. Is acting quality relevant to the “best film” question? Who decides what acting is good and what is wretched? Is being divisible by two relevant to the “best number” question? If so, who decides whether that would be propitious or deleterious?

Such is morality. Perhaps human suffering is relevant vis-à-vis moral questions, with increased suffering being immoral and decreased suffering (or increased pleasure) being moral. Then again, maybe not. For now, there is no way to know. Although we can ascertain facts about what behaviors cause suffering…or what actions cause pleasure…or what behaviors harm the environment, we have no way of knowing those facts’ relevancy to the question of morality.

Conversely, facts involving radiocarbon dating, for example, clearly have relevancy vis-à-vis Darwinian evolution. In the sciences, facts’ relevancy is generally clear.

Rhology: Been wondering something - Where are these "Christofascists"? Compared to the very large number of Islamofascists, they are a speck if they exist at all. And their modus operandi is so different from jihadists as to warrant the serious question - why the "-ofascist" at the end of the appellation?

You need to point these people out and give a good reason to think they're acting in accord with a doctrine that could reasonably be thought to be of Christ; otherwise you're engaging in poisoning the well. Showing that their numbers even approach that of jihadists would help your case as well. It needs the help.

Nihilist: You keep wanting to make this about behavior when, from the commencement, I have said my Christofascist/Islamofascist comparison involves mindset. Large numbers of Christians and Muslims suffer from the pathology that their arbitrary moral opinions can and should be inflicted on other people against their will. One need not be an abortion clinic sniper to be a Christofascist; one need only be a Christian so enamored of his religion that he feels not only can he make objective moral judgments about other people but can coercively impose his moral standards on them, as well. [Consider your personal delusion here: The fallacy that your metaphysical foundation, and its offshoots, extends beyond your mind.] If one’s Christianity is an unwelcome interference in other people’s lives, one is a Christofascist. I use this standard for Muslims and all other theists. I rarely encounter an atheofascist (that being an atheist who acts coercively toward theists).

“One need only remember the commandment addressing covetousness, which lumps thy neighbor’s wife in with that same neighbor’s ox and ass.”

Rhology: You have completely abandoned your original field of discourse on this topic, that of the "wives, submit to your husbands", since I provided you the context.

Nihilist: I only “abandoned my original field of discourse” in your reply, because you chose not to quote the relevant portion of my response. I said, “My concern is not related to the specifics of the inequality but rather to the inequality itself. You condemn Islam’s ‘mistreatment’ of women but, when one looks at Christianity, it is quite clear that women and men are not treated as absolute equals.” As long as you affirm “the head of the woman is the man,” your condemnation of female treatment under Islam is rather like you walking into a bar—nursing a cold Budweiser— and promptly telling everybody downing shots that they should not imbibe alcohol.

Rhology: You're battered so you retreat to the OT, moving the goalposts.

Nihilist: I did not realize you scoff so easily at the Ten Commandments, to which many Christofascists are happily wedded. After all, you must remember the two-and-a-half-ton Ten Commandments monument commissioned by Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. Presumably, his battle over the monument underscores his viewpoint that the commandments remain relevant today. In raising the aforequoted objection, I assumed you might wish to defend the placement of wives alongside oxen and asses.

“This is not a ‘clean break’ from the Islamic misogyny you excoriate.”

Rhology: Deal with the hypothetical all you want. The Bible denies such hypotheticals - God doesn't change, can't be any other way. It's like asking me if God can microwave a burrito so hot that He can't eat it.

Nihilist: My hypotheticals have little to do with the Bible and much to do with you as an individual.

A couple rounds back, I asked you this:

“…what if Jesus had explicitly preached that women should walk ten steps behind men, or that they never should show their faces in public, or that they never should shake hands with men?”

Prior to confirming Jesus did not preach that, you answered:

“I'd submit and conform to it.”

This relates to what I wrote to commence this long rebuttal: If god had said it is necessary to castrate all practicing homosexuals, and then drench oneself in their spurting blood, presumably, you would submit and conform to it. Or, if god had said, every Sunday, it is necessary to torture all heathens prolongedly, presumably, you would submit and conform to it. I know I cannot make objective moral judgments, but your willingness to submit absolutely to a text—a text (!) written by primitives who knew essentially nothing of the natural order—is far more revealing than you might wish to accept.

“Presumably, when that verse was written, god knew quite well that some of his followers would misuse it in the context of hysterical hunts for witches”

Rhology: You're the one who's so fond of freewill. What's wrong if God is a fan of it too?

Man, God just can't win - you won't give Him credit either way!

What's He supposed to do? Zap them out of existence as soon as they start to think a wrong thought about the meaning of the Bible?

Besides, this is just one more moral judgment - you're trying to convince me that these hunts and these Scriptures which supposedly underpin them are morally objectionable. This dog only comes out when the meat is stinky enough, it would seem.

Nihilist: Hold it…I am not making any objective moral judgments. I am using biblical standards as articulated by YOU: After all, you are to apologetics what the finest Oxford fairyologist is to the study of pixies, fairies and elven creatures.

I shall let you speak on behalf of Christians as to the moral righteousness of using torture on suspected witches in order to secure extravagant confessions. “I wouldn't support those gross abuses,” you emphatically stated. You also condemned as sinful executing somebody who was not afforded a fair trial. Undoubtedly, many innocent people were executed as witches, given the miserable standard of evidence that prevailed, the forced confessions attributable to torture and the nonsensical tests confected to distinguish witch from non-witch.

If this spectacle truly were displeasing to god, why would his divinely inspired text include a verse that facilitated and enabled such blood-drenched lunacy? Would omitting/rephrasing that verse have obliterated free will? No. The deity’s alleged omniscience, and his choice to leave the verse “as is,” clearly seems to indicate that god was quite satisfied with permitting the witch-hunts to occur. One wonders why god would indirectly facilitate acts you identify as being sinful.

“it is not even clear from the Bible whether the creator of the universe is aware of Australia.”

Rhology: B/c it's not mentioned in the Bible? Wow - a ZINGER of an argument!

Nihilist: I have reiterated this point quite a bit on my blog. The notion that a book…any book (but particularly a cobbled-together tome from an ignorant period of human prehistory)…is omnisciently inspired is quite extraordinary. Only the most extraordinary of evidence would suffice to substantiate this notion. So, as I scour the Bible, I look for brand new information about the natural order—information that, prior to the Bible’s writing, was unavailable to humankind. But the Bible, to its shame, fails the test. In a recent blog post, I wrote this…

“…the Bible could have contained some brand new information about the natural order. I have harped on this before, primarily because I think The Argument from Mundanity is one of the strongest weapons in an atheist’s arsenal. After all, Christians claim that the creator of the universe directly inspired the Bible’s very words. Forget about Einstein and Hemingway; forget about Joyce and Sagan—this is the creator of the universe here. And yet, despite god’s omniscient authorship, the Bible wallows in pre-scientific primitivism and yawn-inducing mundanity. As Sam Harris observed, ‘[The Bible] does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.’ There is nothing about the actual age or size of the universe. There is nothing about the germ theory of disease. Earth’s vast geography is shrunk down to claustrophobically local levels. It is not even clear from the Bible whether the creator of the universe is aware of Australia. If the Bible’s alleged omniscience had been manifest, that tome could have been meaningful evidence.”

If you want to impress me with an omnisciently inspired book, you shall have to do much better than the Bible. Moreover, you shall have to offer up a better justification for Christofascistic tendencies than the fallacious notion that the world is overarched by your metaphysical foundation, that being the prism through which you view it.

Henry Toole was born to a family of Southern Baptists living in Arkansas. His maternal grandfather was a preacher and, thus, even though his parents were not especially devout, Henry was taken to church at least once a week throughout his childhood years. Aside from occasional bouts of fidgetiness, which are so typical among children, young Henry was enthralled by the stories of Jesus and his miraculous doings. For a few years, he even entertained notions of dedicating his adult life to the church. [The life of a preacher was in close contention with game show host, scientist and garbage collector.] As he became older, though, his rapt interest began to decline; when his parents brought him to church on Sundays, he found his mind wandering to other things, ranging from principles learned in science class to that night’s dinner plans. He still believed each of Christianity’s truth-claims; he simply felt as though he had heard it all before, and everything had the faint odor of sameness.

Over the next few years, doubt began to enter Henry’s mind. The tales of Adam and Eve, a global cataclysm flooding the planet and corpses rising from the tomb no longer seemed as convincing to Henry as they had when he was ten. He married a girl from his town, Patricia, who was moderately religious. By the age of 28, Henry had lost all faith and adopted the label of atheist. His abandonment of his religious convictions was not the result of a personal tragedy or being influenced by skeptics around him. Rather, he simply came to the firm realization that he no longer believed any of the dogma with which he had been raised. He ceased all churchgoing activities; Patricia, under no pressure from Henry, adopted an agnostic stance three years later.

Henry and his wife had three sons, none of whom was raised Christian. Henry never addressed the subject of religion with his sons. In fact, he never discussed religion at all; he was not the type to badmouth the church or blaspheme the deity in which he no longer believed. When they started their family, both Henry and Patricia agreed they would not push their children in any direction with respect to religion, choosing instead to let each find his own way. And, in fact, all three sons eventually became Southern Baptists. Henry and his wife never expressed any objections, and joyfully attended each son’s religious wedding.

Henry and Patricia had a happy marriage, which lasted 58 years. Although there were occasional temptations, neither one ever strayed from the other. Henry was a loving, generous, attentive and supportive husband, as well as a dedicated father who provided all he could to his family. In addition to his work schedule, for roughly half a dozen years, Henry found time to volunteer at a local children’s hospital. A fitness enthusiast, he also regularly participated in walkathons and marathons for charitable causes, ranging from treatment of chronic disease to elimination of poverty. Perhaps his most selfless moment was when one of his sons needed a kidney transplant. With little hesitation, Henry agreed to donate a kidney to his son.

Throughout his life, Henry never regained his religiosity, and neither did his agnostic wife. He died at age 83 and had a secular funeral ceremony, as he specified. His family, including many grandchildren, was devastated, overwhelmed with grief from the loss of “pop-pop,” as he was affectionately known.

Where shall Henry Toole be sent?