Though I haven’t read the journals
And I haven’t read the books
And I’m kinda sorta iffy on the theory
I’m dismissing evolution;
I don’t like the way it looks,
And its seeming contradictions leave me leery
There’s a total lack of evidence
(At least, that I have read)
Of development, where animals change kind
So they all assume transitions
When it could be God, instead!
And they just ignore the obvious design!
And without a God to tell them,
What is evil, what is good,
How can atheists determine right from wrong?
It’s impossible to know the stuff
You shouldn’t or you should,
Still they claim that God is evil all along!
Yes, an atheist is foolish
And the godless world is cold
Evolution is just Satan in a mask…
(Or, at least, that’s what I figure,
And the way I’ve heard it told,
Though I’ve never met an atheist to ask)
So yeah… my aggregator pointed me to an apologetics site, where the author presents “Ten Conflicting Beliefs of Modern Atheism“.
1 Apparent design in creation can usually be explained, even if the explanation appeals to transitions and development even when science has absolutely no clue as to how such development occurred. However, appealing to a designer should be immediately dismissed as a “God of the Gaps” argument.
2 Good and evil are not objective, but simply the shared preferences of individual cultures and they can change from culture to culture – unless one is talking about the God of the Bible. He’s objectively evil.
3 Since miracles are much more rare than our everyday experiences, it would be more reasonable to ascribe a seemingly inexplicable event to possible sources we know could account for the event. However, assuming something like the cell that shows fantastic complexity and apparent design is actually the product of design is completely unreasonable.
4 The fact that divergent religious claims try to explain the existence of the cosmos prove that all religions are false while the fact that there are divergent scientific theories seeking to explain the existence of the cosmos is how knowledge is acquired and is necessary to eventually arrive at the right conclusion.
5 Reason is the only reliable way to establish what is true, and we reason with brains that evolved only for survival value with no regard for the truth of a belief.
6 Science is a field of study centered in experimentation and observation and science dictates that life came from nonliving material, even though in the entire history of mankind, no one has ever once observed life coming from non-life.
7 It is only through planning, intelligence, and hard work that scientist have been able to extend the lives of human beings while the very life they extend is ultimately the product of no planning, no intelligence, and mere accident.
8 The Universe came into existence from nothing – and that nothing is made up of at least two things: quantum fluctuations and time.
9 All human beings are the product of evolutionary forces including survival of the fittest, which means that only those who hold the best attributes will advance the species, but all human beings are completely equal and no one is more valuable than another.
10 Belief in God is a delusion, religion is a virus and it is morally wrong to push religious beliefs on other by expressing them in invocations or other community-centered meetings, which is why atheists seek to push their belief of the nonexistence of God upon all aspects of society.
To be more fair to the writer than he is to us, he does link (in all but one case) to expanded arguments, so these bullet points are not intended to be stand-alone arguments.
And the thing is, I see these claims all the time–so as a public service to you, I open up the comments for your shooting practice. I’m fairly certain I have actually addressed each of these in verse over the years, but that will not be a requirement for you.
Gee, he got it 100% right. Who’d a thunk?
Oh wait…I think the god of the Koran is as evil as the god of the bible. And Loki is a trickster asshole. And Quetzalcoatl required human sacrifice, as well as the deities worshipped by the Druids. And Ra and Osiris and all those other deities from Egypt were pretty self-absorbed, weren’t they? And Zeus! Let’s not forget what an asshole Zeus was. Raping women, cheating like a sumbitch on Hera — who was a piece of work herself. And let’s not start with Shiva — Destroyer of Worlds.
And not one of those gods, demi-gods, and sons of gods thought to tell the humans that worshiped them two little pieces of information that would have saved our species untold misery. 1) Wash your hands, and 2) don’t shit in the drinking water.
Those gods are pretty much objectively evil, too.
Well, um, sort of… #4 is the most annoying one to me personally, and I was interested to see his list of divergent scientific theories. So, he does include a link in there, but it’s to a post that has absolutely nothing to do with the link text. Apparently we’re not supposed to actually click it.
I clicked through on #7 too (“no planning, no intelligence, and mere accident.”). I stopped reading when I got to the part where he says Berlinski considers himself an agnostic. Does he, now? Well y’know, I consider myself King of all Londinium, so we know that’s true.
And I wear a shiny hat.
1. Double standard. Religion also has no idea how such development occurred. They say “God” but I have no idea how God works so they need a bit more detail than that.
2. Religion doesn’t solve moral relativism. It just makes the religions morally relative to each other unless you’re a theocrat. Secular morality exists.
3. Complexity doesn’t equal miracle? Is he saying that a cell is miraculous? Because that’s everyday occurring. Design doesn’t mean it’s a miracle. I don’t even really understand the relation between these two claims.
4. Well it’s that the God-explanations don’t actually explain anything and have zero evidence to support them. What, is he defending the “Sky is a dome” hypothesis?
5. Pretty much spot on. What’s the issue here? That’s why we developed things like the scientific method.
6. The property of life being some sort of magical property was disproved when we constructed urea out of non-living components back in the 1800s.
7. I see no contradiction or issue here.
8. We don’t know the details of Universe’s birth. Does he even know what a ‘quantum fluctuation’ is?
9. Darwin gives us the principle that “we are all cousins.” And the principle of equality is not an evolutionary/genetic force but a sociopolitical one because we believe that’s the best way to run a society (for a variety of reasons). And this is after centuries of terrible societies.
10. A secular society is not the same thing as an atheist society. Asking you not to use the government to push your religion is disrespectful to people of all other religions, not just atheists.
The God of the gaps rears its head, eh. The religious really think their God-did-it explanation is on par with some plausible, very simple explanation. My Bayes says no.
But that aside, what does he even mean when he says biologists don’t know how it occurred? Depending on what he asks of them here, this is extremely dishonest, because even for a true theory, one cannot expect to know all details of processes that happened long ago. That one doesn’t know everything does not mean that one can’t know anything!
I think it’s pretty obvious that we are all human, and therefore share some tastes concerning what we like seeing, and what not. There’s this category error between whether we find something appalling, and whether we have a logical derivation from some axioms of why said thing is appalling. The latter necessarily depends on the choice of axioms, but the former is still in us.
The author didn’t get the joke though – that God is incredibly evil by the standards most contemporary Christians live by.
Fixed it for you. Conflict dissolved!
I don’t find the fact that there are divergent religious beliefs to be proof that they are all false. However, they are certainly almost all false by simple logic, and any one picked randomly is false with good probabaility. But there’s the more important point that divergent scientific theories for a single phenomenon are systematically put to the test by scientists. Any good theory tells you how to test it. Religion provides no such mechanism to weed out false beliefs, and its “theories” make no testable predictions.
Am I mistaken or is the writer here seriously making a rational argument why his reason cannot possibly be trusted?
Science strongly suggests, i’d say. But doesn’t life come from nonliving material in the christian Creation account as well? We’re on the same team here, buddy!
Exactly, very well put! Wait, where’s the conflict?
Yes, that might be how it worked. Again, I don’t see a conflict. It’s not like atheists (or, rather, cosmologists) insist that there must have been absolute nothingness including absence of time and quantum. The notion of something coming from something or nothing is necessarily tied to time. These words are meaningless in absence of a notion of time.
The first is how nature works, the second are the values we choose to uphold. The two are not the same. I hope the author understands the difference some day, it’s very important.
I think most atheists would be opposed to having atheism explicitely written into laws. I certainly would find this absolutely abhorrent. What secularists want is a neutral ground, not an atheistic state by decree.
Look at this desert! Look at this clock!
Paley shows us how this proves design.
It’s the one made by people, so No, not the rock!
How could you possibly miss this bold sign?
Look at this mountain! Look at this chair!
Only one is of intelligence.
You have simply to sit, think deep, and compare,
One conclusion will start to make sense.
That some things are designed, some things just are not!
It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
A pipeline sure is, but a schnozz full of snot?
Oops, I think I may have lost my place.
It’s getting all muddy, the things which are made,
And the things that just kinda is,
Cause the stuff that is latter: a sun-dappled glade
Were creations by Yahweh the Whiz!
Let’s start over, recap: A watch! A desert!
One built by God, the other by Swiss.
When I started to write, my head didn’t hurt!
How could this all go so awf’ly amiss?
I was trying to show how a moor full of heather
Is just not like a fly fishing rod.
There’s no rhyme! No reason! It all fell together!
A prime example of design by God.
For if He’s the Creator, the Great Engineer,
Why did Paley not choose His clean plans
To illustrate design? Did he know, did he fear
That God’s couldn’t compare with humans’?
For if we can’t see in a desert, but we can in a clock
Construction that requires a mind,
It’s a leap of logic, a fallacy, a crock,
To say this proves the rest of the ‘verse is designed.
I tried to address these, but my head hurt too much from repeatedly smashing it into my desk.
Regarding #5, why does he think that brains evolving for reason would be mutually exclusive from brains evolving for survival. Our ability to figure things out was probably ancient hominids’ ONLY shot at survival.
Fish in a barrel do not really constitute target practice. It does get you a bit wet though; I tried it once.
Infrequent commenter, but I couldn’t resist these. Though my lunch break’s over and I was only able to get in two reponses.
“Reason is the only reliable way to establish what is true, and we reason with brains that evolved only for survival value with no regard for the truth of a belief.”
Because regard for the truth of a belief doesn’t factor into the survival value of a brain. Although, I always thought this was a big point in favor of evolution vs. special creation. Brains are just good enough at reason and logic to get by, but nowhere near as good as you’d expect them to be if we were created to have reason. All the cognitive biases that people have are kind of what you’d expect from an evolved brain that’s less than perfect.
“all human beings are completely equal and no one is more valuable than another.”
Who says that? Everyone should have equal opportunity, and be treated equally by the law, but that’s not the same as saying they’re equal. Everyone is different and unique, with a whole range of skills and talents.
Poem responses! I lost it at 7… Oh well, I tried. But seriously, some aren’t even contradictions, while others are gross mischaracterizations or misunderstandings.
1.
Science starts with observation,
And grows with experimentation.
You start at the end
With a divine friend,
And no means of discov’ring causation.
2.
Good and evil aren’t objective or subjective.
They’re a product of shared values and of thought.
‘Cross every culture, everyone is human,
And this is where morality is wrought.
The bible teaches “I have all the answers,
Murder’s wrong, treat your neighbor same as you
Unless your neighbor worships other deities,
Then to Hell with them! Let genocide ensue!”
3.
There’s no evidence
For a known cell designer.
No contradiction.
4.
Three men sit inside a maze,
And ask where they should go.
Quoth one; “The exit’s to the north,
My bible tells me so.”
Quoth two; “The exit’s to the south,
According to my book.”
And so the two men sit and fight,
Not bothering to look.
The third is still exploring.
He hasn’t found the way,
But he’ll try out both right and left
And find the path some day.
5.
Our brains gave us tools, agriculture, and language.
Our brains gave us cattle. Our brains gave us beef.
Our brains gave us lights, vaccinations, and healthcare,
All of which hinge on the truth of belief.
We have survived on the truth of belief.
6
Is an atom alive?
Is a molecule alive?
Is a protein alive?
Is an enzyme alive?
Is DNA alive?
Is a cell alive?
Non-life makes up life.
Non-life flows through life’s veins.
Non-life is replicated, and replicates.
Non-life opens and closes.
Non-life is the substance on which the process of life acts.
Non-life is how we started, and how we will end.
7
… huh? Because people weren’t created, it’s nonsensical for people to want to prolong people’s lives? I can’t even make a poem for this one, it’s just a big non-sequitor.
8.
“Nothing” isn’t nothing,
Empty vacuums can’t exist.
Don’t blame your use of language
On the physicist.
9.
“Fittest” does not care for “best,”
As long as creatures don’t die off.
Our social nature passed the test.
So you and your racist and bigoted implications can just fuck right off.
10
No-forced-praying ain’t denial.
No-monument ain’t blasphemy.
Pray all you want in school or home,
Just leave the rest of us be!
“Science is a field of study centered in experimentation and observation and science dictates that life came from nonliving material, even though in the entire history of mankind, no one has ever once observed life coming from non-life.”
A prediction: Darwin took the place of Galileo as the central villain for the religious. Sometime soon, some abiogeneticist is going to show us all how it started. At that point, Darwin will be forgotten, as a new central villain takes the stage. L
Holy cow – this is a keeper! It should be used in any course that introduces critical thinking.
@Chris J,
Kudos! About that number 7, my train of thought got derailed there as well. Let’s recap:
Yes. So. is the point being made here here that by ignoring the future for the benefit of the past, by rote instinctual level behavior instead of reason and by lip service instead of actual work the theists have not been able to extend the lives of human being even the slightest while the very life they would be extending is ultimately the manifestation of the will of their chosen deity? How is that supposed to work against the scientists?
I like your meter on #9, my attempt at “survival of the fittest” from June:
Since genotype changes in aggregate
It takes to keep phenotypes animate
A swing and a hit test
Not really for fittest:
Survival of the barely adequate
Number 5 tickles me. I have a layman’s explanation that might be on the right track:
“evolution doesn’t have to produce beliefs that are true, only animals that survive and reproduce, and can eventually hone their beliefs. Then when an animal like Homo sapiens is successful enough to do more than just survive and reproduce, it just needs to have the potential to develop beliefs that are more true than not, and must be able to do this in the space of a lifetime. If these truer-belief-developing animals are able to survive in greater numbers than non-truer-belief-developing animals, then over time, most will have that potential, and – because this particular animal developed culture – culturally the practices that take advantage of this material potential to develop truer beliefs are institutionally reinforced, institutionally passed on to descendants, and further propagated. It is that tipping point where an animal can develop a mostly true belief, coupled with the development of culture, that speeds the adoption of mostly true beliefs which, over generations, get refined until they become almost-certainly-true-beliefs. “
“9.) All human beings are the product of evolutionary forces including survival of the fittest, which means that only those who hold the best attributes will advance the species, but all human beings are completely equal and no one is more valuable than another.”
Typical laymen misunderstanding of evolution. Don’t use the word “best” and don’t use the word “advance”. Evolution merely describes the mechanisms that allow for speciation and change over time. It’s not a blueprint for how to live or rank individuals.
Survival of the fittest only means that the organisms selected for had to do with their possessing certain traits/alleles that either helped or didn’t interfere with their ability to survive long enough to reproduce in the particular environment they were living in at a particular time. Emphasis on particular “environment” and “time”. Unless environment always stays the same and time doesn’t pass, there can be no ultimate ‘best”, let alone somewhere to “advance” to.
He is also dismissing why sexual reproduction is such a popular adaptation for so many species in their survival over time: reshuffling of genetic material to produce more variety that it ends up equipping the species for new environmental changes. What is “best” in one time period may not be so in another. Look at how the sickle cell trait helped certain humans living in warm climates survive malaria.
And finally, he is dismissing perhaps the most advantageous of all human traits: the combination of being a social species with a shitload of cognitive faculties that allow us to strategize and respond to whatever the environment throws at us (at least so far). Clearly we can’t do it all individually, so time and resources are pulled amongst us. We all benefit off of the work and intellect of each other, whether its in the form of administering medicine, vaccinations, agriculture, grocery stores, setting up plumbing and heating systems, etc you get my point. There’s no “best” genes that come out ahead without the HUGE advantage of what our intelligent social species as a whole provides for the individual.
If he wants to make the argument that we as a society are wasting our time supporting certain groups of people, that’s an argument that has jack shit to do with evolution. Unless he thinks atheists owe it to the “nature god” to let certain people die even when he have the technology to keep them thriving because…..something about genes?
“5 Reason is the only reliable way to establish what is true, and we reason with brains that evolved only for survival value with no regard for the truth of a belief.”
As one of my favorite philosophers, Willard van Orman Quine, said, “Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind. “