Archive for December, 2010

In a previous thread, someone wrote: “While debating with a theist can be as invigorating as playing chess, one should bear in mind that it’s doing them harm. It’s driving them deeper into their psychosis.” This is simply not true, and yet it’s unfortunately a very common meme among the “Don’t be a dick” crowd. As a counterpoint, I’d like to share a letter we received a few months ago. I don’t post stuff like this often, as it would come across as too self-congratulatory, but I do want to remind everyone that people sometimes change their minds. For context: This guy originally wrote to us in January. He wrote that seeing the show was causing serious doubts in his own Christian beliefs. He then went on to say: I was wondering, if there is no higher power, how you would justify morality in an atheist at all? Please don’t misunderstand, as a young person on the verge of apostasy, I’m not saying that atheists have no morals, although I have met ‘christians’ who have claimed as much. After all, if there is no higher power, then there is no objective truth, ergo no objective morality, meaning all morality is subjective. If that is the case, then to say that a murderer is immoral is surely a fallacy, as he no doubt acted as his morals saw fit. If morality is subjective, then he is as moral for acting out the murder he saw as moral as you are for not acting out a murder you saw as immoral. I wrote back and we discussed the morality issue for a while. The angle I took on this was the Euthyphro Dilemma, though I usually don’t refer to it by name. I like to explore the concept that a God-given morality is somehow objective in a way that human consensus-derived morality is not. In the course of three more exchanges between us, and some messages from Tracie thrown in, we discussed slavery; we discussed the story of Jephthah; we talked about what kind of commands...
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This is a typical conversation between a theist and an atheist, and in fact something very much like it occurred over a lengthy series of back-and-forth comments on this blog last week. Please excuse this paraphrase; I want to boil the conversation down to its most important features, and I hope I’ve portrayed the theist accurately. Theist: “God must exist. Unless there is a god, many features of the universe are unexplainable.” Atheist: “What’s your explanation for God?” Theist: “Don’t be ridiculous! We can’t explain God. He is outside of time and space, and cannot be understood by mere human minds.” Atheist: “But then how do you know that a god exists? Do you have evidence?” Theist: “Of course I do! The universe is evidence for God.” Atheist: “The universe definitely exists, but that’s got nothing to do with providing positive evidence for god. Your argument about having ‘no other explanation’ is just special pleading, granting yourself the authority to invent something that is also unexplained. Not only does it not solve the problem, it invents new ones. So again: Do you have evidence that there is any such thing as a god?” Theist: “Don’t be absurd! Since God is beyond our understanding, we must rely on faith.” Atheist: “That seems like a really bad strategy for actually finding out what is true.” Theist: “Nonsense! Just think about all the other things that scientists accept without complete evidence.” The theist then proceeds to list some of the usual suspects, starting with abstract concepts like “Love” and “Beauty,” and then including some of the vaguer outliers of speculative scientific theories such as aspects of quantum mechanics and string theory. Let me set aside for a moment the issue of how some things are more or less firmly...
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Since we’re only on for an hour now, I’m not sure how much time we’ll have for a topic, but if we have time, I would like to address the following miracle claim I was confronted with in a recent dialog: Out of curiosity though, I ask how you can scientifically prove how this happened: A young girl, between the ages of 3 & 4 drowns and dies. A man who has failed every CPR test in his life, brings her back to life. Later on, she tells her mother that she has a little sister named Emily. Emily does not exist. The little girl says she does. When asked who told her this, she said a lady in white did in a white room. Keep in mind the hospital had no white rooms where she was at and the nurses were not wearing white. Later on the mother is pregnant, the little girl says this is not Emily. It is not. It is a boy. Later on the mother is pregnant again, same thing happens, another boy. The family decides they are not going to have anymore children, but then the mother gets pregnant one more time. The little girl says this is Emily. A girl is born. For the record, this is a true story, with many witnesses. How is it that this little girl saw this lady in white in a white room while she was dead and then predicted the birth of her sister? This is why I am not atheist because I believe something or someone does exist and there is some kind of place after death besides six feet under or ashes. Not to give too much away, but to skip to the end of the discussion, after making a few requests for clarification from the claimant, this miracle is exactly as impressive as saying “Yesterday I flipped a coin, and before it landed, a little child shouted ‘tails!’—and it did land on tails. How do you explain this?!” Hope you’ll be there for the live feed!

Today I was made aware of a Facebook group called — are you ready? — “catholics against ‘the atheist experience’”. That I know of, this is the first expressly anti-AETV Facebook group yet formed. Not that it’s a big thing or anything, with only 55 members at this point, the vast majority of whom appear to be atheists. The Wall posts are a blast to read. Saith the group’s creator, Nathan Boucher, who is only two years out of high school… so i came across this video today on youtube about these atheists who have a show…Now it is freedom of speech but what really annoyed me was the host was totally bashing catholics and he actually gave out the audience consecrated hosts or what he said were. its not right to make fun and mock that which you don’t understand! Which I do believe can be roughly summarized as “hurr de durp durrr.” I suspect Mr. Boucher is referring to this clip here. Read more

Many of you are probably aware that the phone system in the TV studio wasn’t working last Sunday and the crew did whatever they could to make a workable show out of the situation. I’ve just been informed that the phone situation will not be resolved in time for next Sunday’s show. Tracie and I are scheduled to be on that show, and it’ll be the last show of the year. I don’t want to try to find a last-minute solution using Skype (though we’ll look at this for the future) and I’m not going to try to wade through the muck in the UStream chat to find something interesting..so here’s the plan: I will pick out a few relevant news stories and a few interesting e-mails (Tracie is welcome to have a few of her own), and we’ll spend part of the show discussing these. I’d also like to have a bit of fun, so I’ll keep thinking about this during the week and the entire plan may change before showtime….