Faith Is A Road That Leads Anywhere You Want

From Atheism Is the True Embrace of Reality, via Jerry Coyne:

Just about all the Christians I came into contact with “knew” there was a god, too. They, too, spent time in meditative prayer with him on a daily basis. And as a result, they, too, “knew” what God was like. So what did that knowledge tell us about him? How reliable were these personal relationships when it came to establishing the truth about God?

Some of us, on the basis of our relationship with God, knew him to be loving, compassionate, generous, always reaching out to us, pitying our mistakes rather than condemning them. Others, on the basis of their relationship with God, knew him to be angry, jealous, punitive.

Some of us knew that God had more important things to worry about than our sex lives; others knew that human sexual impurity was deeply offensive to him.

Some of us knew that God wanted us to respond to other people’s shortcomings with tolerance and forbearance and humility; others knew that he wanted sin to be made an example of, to be held up and publicly rebuked.

Some of us knew that God was offended by conspicuous consumption when so many people had nothing; others knew that God showered wealth along with other good things on those of whom he approved.

Some of us knew that God saw all religions as different expressions of people’s yearning for him; others knew that traditional, orthodox Christianity was the only route to him.

Some of us knew that the devil was just a myth to explain the existence of evil; others knew that the devil was very real and a genuine threat to our souls.

Some of us knew that there was no way God could ever allow such a thing as hell; others knew that hell was very much a part of God’s ordained order.

We all knew we were right, and we all based that knowledge on the personal relationship we had with him. How could any of us possibly be wrong?

I've said it before and I'll say it again--faith is not a path to truth. It is unable to discern truth from falsehood, and one reaches the conclusion one wants to. Faith leads to conclusions which are mutually incompatible. The people listed above literally cannot all be correct. (However, it is logically possible that they are all wrong.)

Neuroscientists have done studies which identify the regions of the brain which model the morality of others, and which model one's own morality. When contemplating God's desires and values, the regions of the brain which are active are invariably one's own. No religious person has ever conceived of a God who disagreed with themselves on any major point. They may conceive god as the highest, unattainable standard and experience guilt thereby, but that cognitive dissonance does not obviate the reality that it's really their own standards they're failing to live up to.

No Such Thing as a Wrong Answer

I recently attended a lecture by George H. Smith, best known as the author of Atheism: The Case Against God, entitled “10 Questions about Atheism" in Bloomington, IL. He made a point later on during the Q & A that I want to expand on.

Smith described how, if you go to a professor of academic philosophy and tell him about a significant conclusion you’ve reached, he may ask you “oh really, how did you figure that out?” You go over your process, and he says “well, that’s interesting, but you’ve based it on unsound reasoning here, you’re working on a couple of fallacies at this point and this other point, and I think you probably want to fix these problems.” Philosophy professors, he said, are not so much concerned with your conclusion as they are with the process by which you got there. If you have fundamental problems, they’ll send you back to square one.

Now, contrast that with a Christian philosopher. Smith pointed out how, if you go to one of them and say you’ve accepted Christianity, they won’t question your reasons one bit. There’s no wrong answer you can give, Smith said, you might as well say you saw the face of the Virgin Mary on a potato chip. (I’ve seen others talk about songs they heard at apropos moments, religious bumper stickers that crossed their path, and other such coincidental agency-detection.) Smith asked the audience: can you think of any reason, any motivation, any process or evidence you could give that would cause a religious philosopher or apologist to say, “sorry, that’s no good, you need to go back to the drawing board?” Of course not. The baptismal font is right this way, we’re so glad to have you.

Read more at Skeptic Money...

Quicktake - Morality and Altruism

I witnessed the momentary aftermath of two car accidents today. The first was midafternoon--we were driving along a city street, the car in front of us turned onto a side street and there were two cars, surrounded by four or five angry people with cell phones out. We drove around, and it was only as we passed by an ambulance, fire truck, and several police cars heading in the way we'd came that it came to me...how do I know that everything was okay? I just assumed.

Only a few minutes ago, just outside our apartment, a loud bang rattled the windows. Outside, we saw two wrecked vehicles. I shoved my feet into my shoes, ran downstairs and spent a tense few moments comforting a frail old woman who seemed, at least to me, to have a rather terrifying concussion. She was disoriented, forgetful and had a nasty goose-egg the size of a quarter just above her temple. I held her hand and kept her talking until the ambulance arrived.

When I was in college, I learned about the bystander effect. If two people are alone and one has a heart attack, the other will certainly render aid. If that other person is one of ten, a dozen, twenty or more...nobody moves. I saw this happen once when I was in high school when a co-worker at my summer restaurant job had a stroke, turned gray, and collapsed in the middle of the kitchen. Ten people stared and didn't move.

Say what you will about morality in the absence of god--if this world is all we have and this life is all we get, then it makes it a better world for all of us if people are willing to help a stranger for no reason and with no hope of reward, be it immediate or eternal. I don't know how much good I did, but I did what I could and I didn't stand around gawking, and that's the way I prefer it to be. I didn't realize that my small, personal promise to myself not to be one who stands inactive would be put into practice a mere four hours later.

I think about a certain person I've been having conversations with, and the person I used to be. I suspect both of those people would attribute it to a god, who heard a silent prayer and made sure I'd be where I was needed. I don't need it to be that, I just know I did a good thing, and I'll do it again next time I get the chance, and the time after that.

The flashing lights seem to have gone, I think I will look and see how things are.

A Dialogue

Skeptical Rationalist: So, you're a Christian?
John Doe:That's right. I believe that Jesus died for our sins.
SR: Well, that's interesting. Let me ask you this. Do you believe in heaven?
JD: Of course!
SR: How about hell?
JD: Well, I don't know. Some people say that hell is separation from god, or it's just you cease to exist. We don't know.
SR: Well, it's in the book, the everlasting fire, all that. I mean, is Hitler just "separated from God?"
JD: All right, I suppose.
SR: Hold that thought. If somebody offered to let you be on a jury for a murderer who's obviously guilty. Enough that the trial is going to be pretty short. Do you think you would, if the per diem didn't put you in hardship?
JD: Okay.
SR: And you'd send him to jail if that's what the truth was.
JD: Yeah.
SR: And he deserves that.
JD: At least that much.
SR: So, going back to Hitler, if he'd lived to stand trial for his crimes, he'd deserve to go to jail or be executed, right? And you'd be okay with it.
JD: Yes.
SR: At any rate, he died before he was captured, so let's assume Hitler's in hell, right?
JD: Sure. He started a war that killed millions, and tried to exterminate any people that weren't part of his master race.
SR: What was the death toll overall...Let's say fifty million deaths can be laid at his feet.
JD: I guess. Hell is hell, right?
SR: Well, answer me this: how many trillion years will Adolf Hitler be tortured for each single death?
JD: Forever is forever...
SR: Exactly. After a thousand thousand trillion years, after every star has burnt out, he still won't have paid for one percent of the first death on his conscience. No matter what, he will never be finished paying for his crimes, right?
JD: Well...no. There'll never be a time ever when he won't have killed all those people.
SR: At least he'll have Anne Frank to keep him company. She was a Jew, right, so she's in hell.
JD: Well, no, the Jews were God's chosen people.
SR: But if you look at the Bible, that was a limited time offer. Once Jesus came, he said "no man comes to the father except through me."
JD: Well, it's really up to God, I guess.
SR: Maybe. Let me ask you another question.
JD: Okay.
SR: Do you remember that plane from New York that crashed on the Hudson River after takeoff? The pilot brought it down on its belly, and all the passengers and crew were saved?
JD: Yeah, that was a miracle!
SR: Perhaps. But the pilot was a hero, right?
JD: Sure.
SR: You ever think you would buy him a drink for that, if you ran into him and knew who he was?
JD: I might.
SR: He'd deserve it, right?
JD: Yeah, I suppose he does.
SR: Great. Now, stay with me here: I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in God, I don't believe that Jesus died for my sins. That's pretty bad, right?
JD: Well, I certainly hope that you let Jesus into your heart some day.
SR: But if I died right now, I'd go to hell, right?
JD: Well, that's up to God. It's not my place to say.
SR: But according to what the book says.
JD: Yeah, I mean, if you died today, you'd go to hell. We're all sinners, I just have Jesus to forgive me.
SR: So I hear. All right, do you see that pair of pliers there? Go ahead and pick those up.
JD: Why?
SR: Well, I want you to use them to grab hold of my fingernail, tear it back, and then pull it out by the root.
JD: No way! You're crazy!
SR: What, you don't want to?
JD: No!
SR: But I deserve it, right?
JD: Why?
SR: Because if I died right now, that would be the least of my tortures. I'd be thrown into the lake of fire just for starters.
JD: Yeah, but that doesn't mean you deserve it now!
SR: I could be dead five minutes from now. What would I have done in the meantime?
JD: But it's God's choice whether you do or not! It's not up to me what happens to you!
SR: But you'd send a mass murderer to jail. You'd hand the death penalty to Adolf Hitler. And you're okay with rewarding courage and virtue if you got the chance and it didn't inconvenience you.
JD: Yeah, why not?
SR: So, back to the pliers then. On the count of three...
JD: No!
SR: What's different? I'm a sinful person, according to your book. It says any man who is angry, has committed murder in his heart. Any man who looks on a woman with desire, has committed adultery in his heart. For my many sins, I deserve to be tortured forever, and I'm just saying to give me a bit of what I've got coming to me. Don't I deserve it?
JD: It's not my place to say!
SR: Do I deserve to have my fingernails pulled out, my skin peeled off, my flesh burned?
JD: Just stop! You're talking about what happens when you sin against God. He's the judge!
SR: Oh, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s already done. You see, he already knows everything I’ve ever done or ever will do, and whoever does not believe stands condemned already: John three-eighteen. Unless you don’t think I deserve to have my fingernails ripped out. Unless you don’t think I deserve exactly the same hell that Hitler and Anne Frank have. You might want to think about it.

Why I Blog [Semantics Matter]

Adam Savage of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel, this past weekend gave a talk at the Harvard Humanist Association. It was reprinted on boingboing.com, and I quite enjoyed reading it. Among the topics he touched on were that he was a fourth-generation atheist, that the universe is ordered and that whatever set it in motion, if anything, is unknown, and that we ought to practice mindfulness and care for one another. Perfectly reasonable positions to have, in my personal opinion.

Of course, boingboing allows comments, and where there are comments, there are trolls. No good can come of reading the comments. I wasn't a tenth through the thread before I had that familiar sensation of "I feel a blog post coming on," and I started mentally sharpening my Ka-bar while taking notes for things to hit.

We skeptics have a tendency towards specifics--that's a logical fallacy, we say, or your argument is flawed. But as my notes on topics I needed to cover multiplied, as the logical fallacies mounted, I realized that I can't deal with this in specifics. I am now going to generalize instead, and call it what it is. It's bullshit! In all its infinite variation and splendor, complete, utter, nonsensical bullshit. I realized, why would I want to go wading around in it?

I think that's what you do when you get into comment threads on blogs or websites. It's pointless, for the same reason that you don't want to mud-wrestle with pig--you get dirty and the pig enjoys it. Nobody's mind gets changed, the least articulate and least thoughtful people on both sides set the bar for the discourse.

This is a big problem for me, and I think there's a very central issue of communication right down at the "why" of it. Daniel Dennett recently published a paper titled "Preachers Who Are Not Believers." He immediately had to spend an entire page of closely-spaced type to give even a *cursory* overview of a glaring problem: the word "God" has no commonly accepted definition whatsoever. It can mean everything from an omnipotent immortal judge to the most dogmatically inoffensive poetry of the universe, and no two believers agree. (Thus, they cannot all be right, while they most certainly all could be wrong, and thus "faith" immediately fails as a source of knowledge, but I digress.)

I tear my hair out when someone says "atheists believe 'God doesn't exist.'" It's true that Existent and Nonexistent are a true dichotomy, and people always talk in terms as though it's a competition between two claims:

• God Exists
• God is Nonexistent

The second claim, the bucket that atheists are so commonly chucked into, immediately runs into two problems. The first claim can mean whatever you want it to, but the second is nonsensical because what doesn't exist is undefined. Semantically, it's "[_____] is nonexistent." Second, it's an indefensible position because it shifts the burden of proof to the skeptic, who is in the position of needing omniscience to say that at no time, in no place, has any God of any kind ever existed. No wonder theists love to frame the debate like this.

An atheist, by its purest definition, is someone who does NOT believe. That Greek prefix "a-" means "without." Amoral means you lack morals. Apathy means you lack sorrow. Achromatic is without color. The tattoo on my wrist means "without God," and says nothing at all about what I do, positively, believe. Belief is assent. Belief is a positive state of mental agreement. Withholding your assent, even if it's because you don't know, or think that there's no way you ever could know, is still "a-theism."

The most common way I can rephrase this is a trial by jury. The Prosecution claims "The Defendant is Guilty." The defense doesn't have the burden of proof to prove he's Innocent, they just have to establish doubt--if they do, then the jury is left in the "Not Guilty" position. You may actually believe that god is nonexistent, you may believe the defendant is actually innocent--but it's not your job to demonstrate that, it's a bad idea to let them put you there, and it's, in my opinion, foolish in the extreme to stake that out as your position, let alone make a claim of knowledge.

Someone stands up and says "God exists," as above. If your response is "I concur," even if it's your own private definition, you're a theist. Any other response means you...are...not...a...theist. "Agnostic" is a useless term to me because honestly, I don't know any atheists who do claim *knowledge* that no Gods exist. Most are honest enough to know, as I said above, that they're not omniscient. Anyone who tells me "I'm an agnostic" is actually telling me "I'm a tentative atheist" or "I'm a nonmilitant atheist." Likewise "apatheist," itself a silly neologism to say the same thing. You either believe the claim or you don't.

It keeps the burden of proof on the one making the claim--it's not my job to prove that God doesn't exist, it's not the Defense's job to prove that the defendant's innocent. If you can't demonstrate that your particular flavor of divinity is the most likely explanation, then I'm perfectly justified saying "I don't know for sure, but I'm not buying what you're selling." It's also a lot less of a conversation-stopper than "I believe that your god is nonexistent."

That's why I blog. Mixing it up in comment threads gets nobody anywhere, because the discourse is ontologically without meaning. These people are shooting in the dark, leveling rhetorical weapons at where they imagine the targets to be, and nobody understands why they invariably get told "ha ha, you missed!" in response. It's not just useless, it's actively counterproductive. Every miss makes the receiver feel more bulletproof. Every small victory makes the victor more confident and sloppy. Every comment is perceived as both based on nothing more than what side you're on. And we wonder why the conversation goes nowhere. It's this infuriating mix of both overconfidence and lazy rhetoric that makes me tear my hair out. I write blog posts because here, I control the definitions, and I have the space, the time and the word-count to articulate my points fully.

Don't misunderstand me, though: to a first approximation, the atheists are the ones who tend to be overconfident and sloppy. The theists, on the other hand, are overconfident, sloppy and fractally wrong.

How to Deconvert through iTunes and YouTube

(or “Cool Resources You Should Check Out”)

I was raised in a fairly liberal Christian household—RLDS (nee Community of Christ) denomination, and while I had Book of Mormon stories in Sunday School pretty much everything you’ve ever heard about “Mormon theology” is just as strange to me as it probably is to you. My parents encouraged my love of science and evolution from an early age, and pretty much from age 6 to age 14 I avowed that I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up.

I left the “Christianity” label behind when I went off to college, got acquainted with Christian Fundamentalism through the campus IVCF chapter, and after two weeks I decided that I would never again label myself with anything that would make me a fellow traveler with those people. I spent the next ten years or so drifting from New-Age theology, to pantheism, to a fairly nondescript brand of “imaginary friend” theism.

Fast forward to 2008, when I moved to Bloomington and found that my co-worker in the cube next to me was a committed god-botherer, to the point where he went to a non-denominational church because the Baptists were too backslidden, and homeschools his four kids "so that they don’t get indoctrinated in the public schools with liberal ideas, like evolution." Yes, that’s a quote.

So, what could I do but start buying Richard Dawkins and Carl Zimmer books, leaving them out on my desk for all to see? I do a lot of what can humorously be called "iPod work" and so I naturally searched iTunes for anything science-related.

What still takes up a good chunk of my iPod is my favorite all-time podcast, The Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe. Not only was there ample science, but I didn’t know anything about the Skeptical movement and its emphasis on critical thinking, evidence, and the need to combat pseudoscience. This was amazing to me, and I quickly started following Skepticality, Skeptoid, and Point of Inquiry.

Many of these podcasts made frequent references to YouTube videos, and it wasn’t long before YouTube’s preferences steered me towards Thunderf00t’s video series, Why Do People Laugh At Creationists, which I think is ripe for follow-up with a new series called "Thunderf00t Reads the Telephone Directory."

Needless to say, you see where this is going. All this pro-critical thinking, pro-science, anti-religion media was building to something. My theism was melting away like a chip of ice in the palm of my hand, and I credit a Tim Minchin song with finally prodding me to discard it.
But what’s this other show that keeps cropping up in relation to Thunderf00t and AronRa evolution videos? The Atheist Experience? Oh wait, this show is on every week? And they podcast it? Excellent!

I’ve since broadened my catalog with podcasts such as the Non-Prophets (the other atheist-aimed podcast done by the Atheist Experience crew), the excellent For Good Reason, Irreligiosophy, and just for fun, Coverville.

I know I’ve just posted a blizzard of links, bear with me for one more. This is one of my favorite clips from the Atheist Experience, and I'm basically putting my cards on the table as to the shameless plagiarism that I've indulged in every time I've ever gotten loquacious at the Freethinkers meetings.

On Faith and Knowledge

In my last post, I discussed the nature of my skepticism regarding claims of God, miracles and the supernatural. It's a response to the common theist argument that I'm being dogmatic, closed-minded, and that mine is just as much a matter of faith as theirs. Beyond the fact that this tu quoque* is not an argument, it does make me want to talk, again, about the question how do you get your knowledge?

When it comes to truth claims, again, I have two First Principles: first, that a claim should not be accepted until it has been demonstrated. Second, truth should be constant for all observers. We live in a world where journalistic balance requires two talking heads from either side of any issue to go on television and argue with each other for five minutes. We think of understanding of issues involves my version, your version, and the truth somewhere in the middle.

It doesn't always work that way, though, particularly in formal argumentation. In fact, the third of the Logical Absolutes is the Law of the Excluded Middle for statements of truth. For example, the statement "God exists" is either true, or it is false, not both at the same time and not any kind of halfway. One of the two possibilities is necessarily wrong. Theists make the claim that one can obtain knowledge through faith, and I propose that this claim is false.

What is "faith?" The apostle Paul wrote that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I agree. Paul is saying that to have faith is to act as if your belief is true. He says "assurance," "conviction," regarding things hoped for, and not seen. He instructs us to treat hopes as certain and to use certainty as truth, without confirmation or evidence.

This is a bit of a tonal shift in the bible, and to me it is an indication that the writer of those words lived during a time when paradigms were beginning to change. If Moses ever saw a burning bush, a pillar of fire, or parted a sea, he would be past Paul’s definition – his faith would be the assurance of past experience, the conviction of things seen in broad daylight. In the Old Testament, faith generally meant "loyalty and obedience to God." The faith of Abraham was not in the strength of his belief, but in his willingness to obey God's command to sacrifice his son. This theme is lost when read with the New Testament definition in mind, as most Christians will. (I can’t speak for other religions but I note that “Islam” means “submission” to the will of Allah.)

It’s only in those writings of the first and second century that we get this notion that faith includes, even is defined by, credulity to the uncorroborated. Think about it—the early Christian writings were all both created and promulgated by faith communities organized around a single supposed miracle, that the Son of God died, and then rose again. At the time, few believed, nobody could prove, and--even though accounts of it include mentions of an earthquake, an eclipse, and the walking dead—the subject of whom had quickly vanished without a trace. The nature of this miracle was such that it was not obedience, but belief, that defined one’s faith.

Consider the miracles attributed to Jesus during his lifetime. If they ever happened, then I'd argue that the Disciples did not need purely Pauline faith. And yet, as Jesus is walking on the proverbial water, a patently undeniable display of power, the focus is placed on Peter’s doubt. The story, first written decades after Jesus’ death, says that when he tried to walk on water with Jesus, he started to sink, and Jesus chided him for his lack of faith. Was it not immediately demonstrated that Jesus had the power to keep him above the water? At that point, did Peter not possess both belief and knowledge? I’m sure it’s plausible that Peter had a Luke Skywalker moment to say “I don’t believe it,” with Jesus’ “O ye of little faith” serving as Yoda’s “That is why you fail,” but surely it is easier to accept that which you’ve seen yourself than, as Paul tells us, to believe without ever seeing.

If faith is a valid means to obtain knowledge of the real truth, then we should expect users of faith to reach somewhat similar conclusions about the important questions that go under the heading of “matters of faith.” It nearly goes without saying that this is false. We have over 30,000 different denominations of Protestantism alone, plus Catholics, Orthodox, Islam, Hinduism; the list goes on and on. We cannot even accept this as agreement on the claim "God Exists," because the attributes each faith and even each believer assign to God are mutually contradictory, and thus impossible.

It’s worse than the joke about the doting mother watching the marching band: “Oh, look at my Johnny, he’s the only one in step!” In the case of faith, not only is nobody in step, they’re playing off different sheet music, different meter, different tempo, their instruments are tuned for incompatible scales and their maps of the parade routes are wildly different. While this doesn't prove that all of them are wrong in their beliefs, we do know that if we have 100 marchers then at best 99 of them are wrong, and faith doesn’t tell us which it is, any more than you could judge the correct strain of music from the marching band cacophony.

It necessarily tells us that faith is capable of producing a false conclusion. It tells us that if we go on faith, we have no assurance we aren’t wrong, that somebody or nobody else has the right answer. This shouldn't come as a surprise--after all, we basically are talking about believing in god because you believe in god. If you accept a claim on the basis of accepting of the claim, it's circular, invalid. If you have an unsound syllogism you can "prove" nearly anything. Almost any theistic claim to demonstrate god's existence is going to begin with this presupposition that god exists, asserting that the emotion of certainty is actually real.

And as far as methodological naturalism goes? It generates internally consistent, testable, correctable models of the reality which we experience. It allows consensus to be built. If people disagree over facts, it allows for one person to be proven wrong. It generates new questions. It opens up areas about which we know nothing, giving further opportunities for our knowledge to expand. Whenever unanswered questions have begged the intercession of a higher power, further inquiry has unlocked the puzzles.

I reject the substitution of presupposition for knowledge. I have literally seen it argued that, in a non-theistic universe, trying to demonstrate the "evidence for 'evidence'" leads to infinite regress, whereas theists "know" that evidence exists because God is unchanging and thus the universe he created reflects that consistency. Note that the existence of god is simply asserted.

I'm fully aware of the limits of inductive reasoning, that science may approach truth without ever completely proving it. But on the principles that no claim should be accepted until it is demonstrated, and that truth should be constant for all observers, science does quite well. It has never even hinted at any need for a God hypothesis.

"Even if you can’t imagine the explanation, Sister, remember there are things beyond your knowledge. Even if you feel certainty, it is an emotion, not a fact."

--Father Flynn, from "DOUBT," written by John Patrick Shanley

*tu quoque: from the Latin, loosely translated, "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I?”

On Skepticism of Claims

I've decided for my first blog post to address a common argument that floats around the apologist circles: Methodological Naturalism. I've often gotten into online discussions that quickly got derailed by the accusation that I, as the skeptic/atheist/naturalist in the conversation, have a presuppositionalist, faith-based position that nothing supernatural exists.

This really does cut to the heart of the matter for me, for reasons which I'll explore in depth another time. But briefly, the apologist is attempting to frame the issue to their advantage; "Naturalism" is not a word that is used in scientific circles in the sense that theists use it. The apologist isn't saying that I'm a researcher of ecology or the flora/fauna of a given region, they are applying this "-ism" label to me to make implications about what arguments I'm necessarily going to reject out of hand for faith-based reasons. (It's the same reason that I don't think "atheism" is ever going to not be hors de combat: there's too much of a connotation that it's a dogmatic "-ism.")

I have had this accusation leveled at me in a number of ways. "You're blinded by your commitment to methodological naturalism," "you're biased against miracles," or most infuriatingly "what is your evidence for 'evidence?'" Anti-science apologists will quickly attempt to undermine the foundations of evidence-based epistemology, again as an attempt to frame the issue to their advantage.

I am not a methodological naturalist in the sense they mean it. I am perfectly willing to consider miraculous evidence for, say, the existence of God or the validity of the Bible. I am absolutely willing to hear them out the reasons to believe in a god. I love hearing arguments, evidence, apologetics, and I'm thrilled when any of them holds up to even casual scrutiny. It's not my fault that every bit I've ever been presented with has ultimately proven to be unsound, fallacious, or just flat wrong.

I have two principles that I start from, in addition to the Logical Absolutes. The first is that no claim should be accepted until it has been demonstrated. I don't say "proven." I don't say "evidenced." "Demonstrated" is a broad net, and can encompass rational argument, logic, or what-have-you. It's inclusive of naturalism, but not limited to.

On the question of god's existence, I call myself an atheist because the statement's truth has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction. I tend to believe the statement is false, but that is an induction, not a faith-based conviction. I'm open to being proved wrong, but I'll want to ask "how do you know?" It's not a glib question--I want to know how you got the knowledge.

I don't know how God's existence could be demonstrated to me. I've asked theists flat out to take their best shot, and the results are laughable. They'd much rather talk about biblical authority, or the Moral Argument, anything but what justification they have to believe that it is anything more than the house of cards it seems to be. This is invariably where they accuse me of having blinders, of being deluded, of having my own faith-based position, and I say that's bull. I'm perfectly willing to consider a miracle as evidence of the supernatural. But how does one know.

The problem comes in when talking about miracles. If I were the methodological naturalist they say I am, then I'd be explaining away, for example, the parting of the Red Sea as a combination of low tide, freak wind conditions and other ad-hoc speculation about possible causes. I don't insist on naturalistic explanations for such a miracle. But how do we know it actually ever happened in the first place? We can't discuss how it happened until we establish to some level of confidence that it did happen? Certainly the Egyptians record no series of calamities such as locusts, frogs, boils, etc, ultimately culminating in the death of their god-king and his troops, crushed beneath the waves.

Miracles have this maddening tendency to occur in times and places where we have, at best, anecdotal or textual evidence for them. I've helped cater weddings, and I can say that it took about four bushels of food to feed three hundred people, so five thousand people would be on the order of sixty-seven bushels (plus twelve--apparently omniscience has a margin for error of fifteen percent when you're breaking the laws of thermodynamics.) Getting all that from five loaves and two fishes is impressive--I have no methodologically naturalistic explanation. But all we have are copies of copies of thirdhand accounts that it ever happened at all, so it's not worth much to me. Modern day miracles are nowhere near that stupendous...somebody's cancer goes into remission, a plane crashes that only kills 99% of its passengers--these are things that don't need recourse to "it's a miracle!" Sure it could have been god, or it could have been the exhaustive efforts of pilots, engineers, officials in response to other crashes--how do you know?

My position, first and foremost, is "I don't know." I don't claim that science has all the answers; if science is good at anything it's good at showing that what we don't know is nearly infinite, what we do know is tentative, and some questions may never get good enough data to say for sure. But I'm not going to accept the claim is true unless somebody convinces me.

How do you get around the flimsiness of the arguments and evidence for miracles? The answer is, of course, faith, which deserves its own entry. As this has been quite lengthy enough, I will address that in a subsequent post, where I go over the second of my two first principles mentioned above.

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is closer to the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

--Thomas Jefferson